Informal Caregivers' Experiences with Performing Telemonitoring in Heart Failure Care at Home-A Qualitative Study.

Unlabelled: Informal caregivers have an important role in caring for family members at home. Supporting persons with a chronic illness such as heart failure (HF) in managing their self-care is reported to be a challenge and telemonitoring has been suggested to be of support.

Aim: to explore informal caregivers' experiences with performing non-invasive telemonitoring to support persons with HF at home for 30 days following hospital discharge in Norway and Lithuania.

Self-Care Monitoring of Heart Failure Symptoms and Lung Impedance at Home Following Hospital Discharge: Longitudinal Study.

Background: Self-care is key to the daily management of chronic heart failure (HF). After discharge from hospital, patients may struggle to recognize and respond to worsening HF symptoms. Failure to monitor and respond to HF symptoms may lead to unnecessary hospitalizations.

Non-invasive home lung impedance monitoring in early post-acute heart failure discharge: Three case reports.

Background: Patients discharged after hospitalization for acute heart failure (AHF) are frequently readmitted due to an incomplete decongestion, which is difficult to assess clinically. Recently, it has been shown that the use of a highly sensitive, non-invasive device measuring lung impedance (LI) reduces hospitalizations for heart failure (HF); it has also been shown that this device reduces the cardiovascular and all-cause mortality of stable HF patients when used in long-term out-patient follow-ups. The aim of these case series is to demonstrate the potential additive role of non-invasive home LI monitoring in the early post-discharge period.

Health Care Professionals' Perceptions of Home Telemonitoring in Heart Failure Care: Cross-Sectional Survey.

Background: Noninvasive telemonitoring (TM) can be used in heart failure (HF) patients to perform early detection of decompensation at home, prevent unnecessary health care utilization, and decrease health care costs. However, the evidence is not sufficient to be part of HF guidelines for follow-up care, and we have no knowledge of how TM is used in the Nordic Baltic region.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe health care professionals' (HCPs) perception of and presumed experience with noninvasive TM in daily HF patient care, perspectives of the relevance of and reasons for applying noninvasive TM, and barriers to the use of noninvasive TM.

The dynamics of self-care in the course of heart failure management: data from the IN TOUCH study.

Introduction: Self-care is an important patient-reported outcome (PRO) for heart failure (HF) patients, which might be affected by disease management and/or telemonitoring (TM). The number of studies reporting the influence of TM on self-care is limited.

Aims: This study aimed: to assess whether TM, in addition to information-and-communication-technology (ICT)-guided disease management system (ICT-guided DMS), affects self-care behavior; to evaluate the dynamics of self-care during the study; to investigate factors contributing to self-care changes; and to identify a patient profile that predisposes the patient to improvement in self-care.

Patient education significantly improves quality of life, exercise capacity and BNP level in stable heart failure patients.

Unlabelled: The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of complex ambulatory education on quality of life, exercise capacity and B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) level in chronic stable heart failure patients.

Material And Methods: Heart failure patients in NYHA class II/III (n = 31) on optimal medical treatment were recruited from the outpatient department. The following data were evaluated before and 2 months after the patient education: quality of life (evaluated by the Minnesota questionnaire), peak exercise oxygen consumption (VO2) and BNP level.