The Prevalence of Pulmonary Hypertension, With or Without Right Ventricular Loading, in Patients With COVID-19 Who Are Being Treated With a Respirator in the Intensive Care Unit.

The virus infection Covid-19 fills our hospitals and intensive care departments in a very unique way and there is a lack of essential insight into the pathophysiology of the disease. As a result, very specific treatment options are missing. The US Medicines Agency (FDA) has in the last days given a general license for treatment with inhaled nitric oxide (iNO). Inhaled NO in Sweden (and Europe) is approved for the indication of pulmonary hypertension in adults.

However, no one has yet described the occurrence of pulmonary hypertension, with or without right ventricular loading, in the Covid-19 patients who become so seriously ill that they need to be treated at an IVA ward. Knowledge of this is, of course, a prerequisite for determining the need for pulmonary artery catheterization (PA catheter, Swan-Ganz catheter) and also to better understand whether iNO treatment or other forms of lung selective vasodilation therapy may be of benefit to this patient group.