Mindfulness Meditation for Pulmonary Hypertension

Patients with pulmonary hypertension experience a plethora of bothersome symptoms, including severe cardiopulmonary decline due to right-sided heart failure. Regardless of etiology, normalization of pulmonary pressures using medications targeting pulmonary hypertension is a major goal of medical management. Despite significant advances in the medical and pharmacological treatment of pulmonary hypertension over the past few decades, patients still have unmet psychosocial and behavioral health needs, which affect their long-term prognosis. Patients with pulmonary hypertension continue to suffer from psychological distress such as depression, anxiety, and stress, as well as a high symptom burden.

Mindfulness Meditation for pulmonary hypertension (MMPH) is a tele-mindfulness-based intervention (TeleMBI) program tailored for patients with pulmonary hypertension. Our goals include determining the feasibility and acceptability of MMPH as a symptom self-management tool in adults with pulmonary hypertension and determining the clinical impact of the MMPH program in reducing symptoms, anxiety and depression in pulmonary hypertension.

MMPH is a mobile device-based application aimed at a group of people living with PH. The core of the program is weekly practice content, which includes body scanning, mindful breathing and body awareness meditation. In addition to the audio content of the training, the program also collects important daily data on the participant's pain, anxiety, fatigue and breathlessness to monitor the participant's overall physical condition on a daily basis. The overall layout of MMPH is clear and easy to understand, and the system is suitable for people of all ages, with easy to use and informative instructions.

The MMPH app does not collect or store any personal information. The application is designed to prioritize privacy and users are not required to share any information to use the application. Each user is given his or her own unique username and password before using the application, and users do not know each other's usernames. Once logged in to the MMPH app, users do not need to log in and out multiple times but remain logged in.