The role of vasodilators in patients with progressive systemic sclerosis. Interstitial lung disease and pulmonary hypertension.

The use of systemic vasodilator drugs in reducing pulmonary artery pressures in patients with pulmonary hypertension is controversial. The effect of hydralazine in four patients with pulmonary hypertension resulting from interstitial lung disease (group 1) and nifedipine in four patients with pulmonary hypertension secondary to progressive systemic sclerosis (group 2) was investigated. Hydralazine blunted exercise induced elevations in pulmonary arterial pressures in individual group 1 patients; nifedipine failed to effect significant salutory hemodynamic changes in any group 2 patients.