The Current Role of Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test in the Diagnosis and Management of Pulmonary Hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive disease with poor prognosis if left untreated. Despite remarkable achievements in understanding pathophysiology, specific treatments, and therapeutic strategies, we are still far from definitive cure for the disease, numerous evidences have underlined importance of early diagnosis treatment to improve prognosis. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) gold standard assessing functional capacity evaluating pathophysiological mechanisms underlying limitation. As effort dyspnea earliest one main clinical manifestations PAH, CPET has been shown provide valid support detection, differential diagnosis, prognostic stratification PAH patients, being useful tool both first approach patients follow-up. The purpose this review present current applications pulmonary propose possible future utilization be further investigated.