DEAR DR. GOTT: In a recent column, you addressed the condition of pulmonary hypertension and said to see a pulmonologist and get a chest X-ray to detect this. I did just that for my 9-year-old daughter, but the pulmonologist did not detect pulmonary hypertension from the results of the X-ray. He felt her breathing issue was due to allergies and treated her with allergy medication.
Thank goodness for her pediatrician. She felt something was still wrong and sent her for an echo. The technician immediately caught that she had something wrong with her and only told me that the results from the echo were sent to a pediatric cardiologist to be read. So the diagnosis came from a cardiologist, who is the one who treated the pulmonary hypertension.
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