Why carry out this study?

Several treatment advances have been made for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH); however, little is known about the real-world treatment patterns, particularly with respect to treatment patterns before and after the publication of the 2015 ESC/ERS guidelines

As new treatments and advances are introduced and the effects of combination therapies are compared against those of current prostacyclin formulations, the medical community is interested in understanding therapy patterns and outcomes of patients prescribed combination therapy compared to monotherapy as it advocates for further cost-effective treatments

The purpose of this study is to examine medication treatment patterns among patients with PAH who were newly initiating therapy

What was learned from the study?

Patients with upfront combination therapy increased and the time to sequential combination therapy decreased following publication of the 2015 ESC/ERS guidelines, indicating that physicians were prescribing according to recommended guidelines

Patients who initiated combination therapy had greater adherence and persistence with fewer discontinuations than patients who initiated monotherapy

The majority of patients initiated monotherapy treatment for PAH, most often PDE5is, despite market availability of several new medications