[Use of nitric oxide in the evaluation of pulmonary arterial hypertension]

The purpose of this article is to describe a patient with severe pulmonary artery hypertension, who was evaluated in the catheterization laboratory with the use of nitric oxide to check the degree of reversibility of the pulmonary hypertension. The patient is a 18 months old baby with atrio-ventricular canal and severe pulmonary hypertension, whose vascular resistance dropped from 8.75 Wood U/m2 to 1.32 Wood U/m2. With these findings the pulmonary artery hypertension was considered reversible and made him a good candidate for successful corrective surgery. The use of nitric oxide is very useful for the evaluation of the degree of reversibility of the pulmonary vascular resistance in cases with severe pulmonary artery hypertension with a left to right shunt.