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Trial: Monitor Implant Lowers Heart Failure Hospitalization

Human heart and arteries (Yale School of Medicine/Wikimedia Commons)

(Yale School of Medicine/Wikimedia Commons)

A clinical trial of a wireless heart monitor implanted in heart failure patients shows the device can markedly reduce the rate of further hospitalizations. The study, conducted in the U.S. and funded by the the monitor’s manufacturer, is published in the current online issue of the journal The Lancet (paid subscription required).

The implanted device by CardioMEMS in Atlanta, Georgia measures the pressure in the pulmonary arteries that connect the heart to the lungs. Some 550 patients diagnosed with and hospitalized for moderately serious heart failure, were enrolled in the clinical trial at 64 sites in the U.S. Patients were assigned to either (1) the treatment group that used the wireless device in addition to standard care; or (2) the control group that received standard care only — monitoring of patient-reported changes in symptoms and daily weights.

After six months, 83 heart-failure or related hospitalizations were reported in the treatment group of 270 patients, a rate 30 percent lower than the 120 heart-failure hospitalizations in the control group of 280 patients. During the entire follow-up — an average of 15 months later — the treatment group had 153 heart-failure related hospitalizations, 39 percent fewer than the 253 events in the control group.

Only three patients in each group had device-related or system-related complications, none of which led to serious consequences. No patients experienced pressure-sensor failures in their devices.

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