Chest
Selected ReportsAutopsy Findings of Heart and Lungs in a Patient With Primary Pulmonary Hypertension Associated With Use of Fenfluramine and Phentermine
Section snippets
Case Report
A 36-year-old woman (height, 157 cm; weight, 117 kg; body mass index, 47.5) was transferred from the outpatient cardiac laboratory to the ICU of University of Kansas Medical Center after cardiorespiratory arrest that occurred during right-heart catheterization. She had delivered a son by cesarean section in 1993 and received a diagnosis of gestational diabetes at that time. She had a history of fen-phen usage (daily dosage: fenfluramine, 30 mg; phentermine, 15 mg) for 7 months from February to
Discussion
PPH is a lethal disease with an estimated median survival of 2.5 years.7 PPH occurs more frequently in female than in male patients, and PPH associated with fen-phen usage appears to occur almost exclusively in obese, middle-age women (mean ± SD age, 44 ± 8 years; body mass index > 30), as seen in this case.14
All 24 patients reported from the Mayo Clinic with cardiac valvular disease were female, 8 of whom also had PPH.4 Thus, fen-phen usage causes both cardiac valvular lesions and PPH
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