Dive Brief:
- A pair of studies suggests that remote monitoring may improve clinical outcomes in patients with implanted cardiac devices, MedPage Today reports.
- One study, which looked at health outcomes of 262,564 patients implanted with St. Jude Medical devices over a four-year period, found that rates of survival increased as adherence to remote monitoring increased.
- The other study looked at patients implanted with Boston Scientific ICDs both with and without CRT from 2006 to 2010. Researchers found that remote monitoring was associated with lower risks of both death and hospital readmission after adjusting for demographics, device and procedure characteristics, physician and facility characteristics, and other factors.
Dive Insight:
Remote monitoring is gradually becoming accepted in various areas of medicine as a key adjunct to traditional treatment. In this case, evidence suggests that remote monitoring of a subgroup of cardiac patients can have an important effect on their outcome. It will be interesting to see future studies looking at the impact of remote monitoring on other common conditions.