Pulmonary hypertension, sleep-disordered breathing, and beta blockers in heart failure patients.

Heart failure patients with pulmonary hypertension have a worse prognosis than heart failure patients with normal pulmonary artery pressures. Heart failure is usually considered the cause of the pulmonary hypertension when the two conditions coincide. However, there is evidence that sleep-disordered breathing may be responsible for the pulmonary hypertension in these patients, and the worsened outcomes in heart failure patients with pulmonary hypertension may be due to sleep-disordered breathing. In addition, sleep-disordered breathing may provide an explanation for the beneficial effect of beta-adrenergic antagonists in heart failure patients.