Mechanistic data hooking up OSA to PH are apparently sparse, even though a good bidirectional causal relationship is suggested
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Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a highly prevalent syndrome, affecting up to 1 billion people worldwide. 1 Dickens wrote classic literature describing Fat Boy Joe with “dropsy,” a form of right heart failure, implying that some of the early descriptions of OSA ostensibly were complicated by pulmonary hypertension (PH). In a landmark French study, OSA did not seem to be independently associated with significant PH. 2 This dogma stuck for some time; however, Sajkov et al 3 , 4 published studies approximately 20 years ago that seemed to show an important link between OSA and elevated pulmonary artery pressure when patients with pulmonary parenchymal disease and hypoventilation were excluded from analysis. The authors drew 3 major conclusions about the link between OSA and PH. First, OSA is associated with only mild to moderate PH. Second, patients with OSA and PH had marked hypoxic vasoreactivity, such that small changes in inspired FiO2 caused large elevations in pulmonary arterial pressures.
