Pulmonary Endarterectomy and Balloon Pulmonary Angioplasty for Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension - Similar Effects on Health-Related Quality of Life

Background: While hemodynamics and exercise capacity in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) can be improved by invasive therapy such as pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) and balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA), there has been little data on the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in such patients. Methods and Results: This single-center and observational study compared the impact of invasive therapy on HRQOL. We utilized the Medical Outcome Study 36-Item Short Health Survey (SF-36) to measure HRQOL and compared HRQOL changes after PEA and BPA. A total of 48 patients were diagnosed with CTEPH. Of these, 39 patients completed questionnaires before and after invasive therapy. The PEA group (n=15) and the BPA group (n=24) had similar improvements in clinical parameters. With regard to HRQOL score, both groups had fairly low scores in physical functioning (PF), role physical (RP), general health (GH), social functioning (SF), role emotional (RE), and physical component summary (PCS) at baseline. PF, GH, vitality (VT), mental health (MH), and PCS had significant improvements in the PEA group while PCS and all subscales except for bodily pain (BP) had significant improvements in the BPA group. Furthermore, changes between baseline and follow-up were not significantly different between the 2 groups. Conclusions: BPA for patients who are ineligible for PEA can recover HRQOL to a similar level to that achieved by PEA.