Pulmonary Hypertension

This document contains:

Definition
Diagnosis
Treatment
Pulmonary Hypertension Clinics

My name is Dianne Zwicke. I am a medical doctor trained and board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Diseases. I completed my undergraduate education at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I attended Graduate and Medical School at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (yes, Michael Jordan was there playing college basketball while I was there-it was a great time for college ball!) I then completed my Internal Medicine training at the Marshfield Clinic (University of Wisconsin Program), with Invasive/Interventional Cardiovascular Medicine training at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee (University of Wisconsin Program). Since that time, I have made Milwaukee my home and have thoroughly enjoyed "that place by the lake". Since the start of my practice in 1987, I have had an interest in the more complex and "orphan" (rarely occurring) disorders.

Two months into the start of my practice, I met my first pulmonary hypertension (PH) patient. She was successfully treated with Flolan, then an experimental drug. Shortly after that, a very sick five-month old baby girl with PH was referred to me. And so it continued. Certainly, pulmonary hypertension fits under the "orphan" disease category, though I sure see a lot of it. The reason for this has four components: we diagnose PH better nowadays, we have some treatment options, doctors are becoming better educated about PH (meaning patients are being referred earlier while their disease is in a treatable stage), and there is a substantial amount of research continually going on.

Ramagopal Tumuluri, MD Cardiologist Board Certifications: Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, Board Elegible in Interventional Cardiology

Dr. Ramagopal Tumuluri joined our group in July of 2004 after completing a one-year Interventional Cardiology Fellowship and a three-year Cardiology Fellowship in June 2002, both at University of Wisconsin Medical School-Milwaukee Clinical Campus at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he also served as the resident research investigator. Dr. Tumuluri earned his medical degree at the B.J. Medical College, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, India. He has published various abstracts and papers. He was invited to present at Japanese National Cardiovascular Research Center, Osaka, Japan in 1997 where he presented a lecture on "Effect of hemodynamics and humoral factors on procoagulant and adhesion molecule expression in human vascular cell". Dr. Tumuluri is a member of the American College of Cardiology, the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians.

If you are reading this web site, you or a person you care about has probably just been diagnosed with PH. It is important for both the patient and the caregivers to educate themselves about this disorder. This will make the evaluation and treatment phases much easier for everyone. The first question everyone has is "Can this condition be cured?" Unfortunately, there are only rare times in which PH can be cured. It would be much more realistic to say that it cannot be cured - but it can usually be treated. The information that follows is i

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