By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

Christie Merriman Breault has what she calls "the other high blood pressure" -- pulmonary hypertension, a life-threatening illness.

"Pulmonary hypertension patients are only two in a million," said Breault, a support group leader for the Kansas Pulmonary Hypertension Association. "From that small number, only 5 percent of that is familial, meaning (it's hereditary)."

Fewer than 500 people nationwide are diagnosed with the disease each year, and for reasons not fully understood, 85 percent of those are women in their child-bearing years. Breault was diagnosed at the age of 28, eighteen months after giving birth to her son, Logan.

Logan is 14 now, and Breault, 40, has survived 12 years with her illness. At present, there is no cure for pulmonary hypertension, and she remains on a waiting list for a heart and lung transplant at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

About every three months she travels from her family's home near Wichita for checkups at the clinic, in Rochester, Minn.

Breault helped organize a support group meeting Sunday afternoon in Salina at the Holiday Inn Holidome for area pulmonary hypertension patients and their families. The event drew an audience of about 25 people, who listened to Dr. Remzi Bag of Baptist Medical Center, in Oklahoma City, discuss new treatments for the disease.

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