Patients with heart failure (HF) who undergo remote pulmonary artery (PA) pressure monitoring may face a lower risk of being hospitalized, according to new data published in Current Problems in Cardiology.
Researchers preformed a systematic review and meta-analysis, with the systematic review covering five different trials and data from more than 700 patients. Seventy-percent of those patients were men, and the mean patient age was 64.6 years old. The mean patient BMI was 29.6.
In the analysis, there was a total of 382 patients with an ejection fraction higher than 40% and 134 patients with an ejection fraction lower than 40%.
While 46.9% of patients had a history of prior myocardial infarction, other common comorbidities included diabetes mellitus (43.5%), hypertension (66.9%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (24.5%) and atrial fibrillation/flutter (52.6%).
The mean PA pressure was 27.2 mmHg, the authors added.
A total of two trials were included in the meta-analysis assessing hospital admissions. The authors reported a total of 401 hospital admissions with 168 admissions in the treatment group and 233 admissions in the control group.
Overall, patients who experienced remote PA monitoring were not as likely to be hospitalized compared with patients who did not.
“This extensive systematic review identified major baseline characteristics in patients undergoing remote PA pressure monitoring with the meta-analysis evaluating hospital admissions,” wrote lead author Ravi A. Thakker, MD, with the department of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and colleagues. “This analysis confirmed that in patients undergoing remote PA pressure monitoring there was a 51% chance of patients having reduced rates of hospitalizations. Our findings are consistent with prior studies supporting the use of remote PA pressure monitoring in reducing hospitalizations.”
Read the full study here.