Telemanagement of Heart Failure Patients Across the Post-Acute Care Continuum.

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a chronic condition causing nearly 1 million hospital admissions annually in the United States with 25% of patients rehospitalized within 30 days.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether telemanagement of HF patients throughout the post-acute continuum of care would reduce rehospitalization rates and improve patient self-care knowledge and satisfaction.

Materials And Methods: HF patients discharged to a skilled nursing facility (SNF) received telemanagement by HF clinicians with opportunity for continuation at home with assistance of home healthcare (HHC) nurses.

Humoral factors trophic for vascular smooth muscle during the development of hypertension in rats.

There is evidence that a humoral factor or factors in rats with one-kidney, one-clip (1K1C) hypertension increase growth of cultured vascular smooth muscle cells. Such humoral trophic factors may contribute to the abnormal growth of arterial muscle in hypertension. To further study the longitudinal expression of this trophic factor or factors, we prepared rats with 1K1C hypertension of different durations.

Humoral factor(s) in hypertensive rats trophic for cultured aortic smooth muscle cells.

Humoral factors in one-kidney, one-clip (1K,1C) hypertension in rats increase growth of smooth muscle cells cultured from rat arteries. To further characterize the plasma factor or factors involved, we prepared male rats with early, benign 1K,1C hypertension and paired them with one-kidney (1K) normotensive controls. In the presence of growth stimulated by background levels (1%) of fetal calf serum (FCS), plasma-derived serum (PDS), fresh or frozen, from 99 1K,1C rats differentially increased [3H]thymidine incorporation of growth-arrested rat aortic cells; increases were up to 93% more than those evoked by the paired 1K PDS and were concentration related (P < 0.

Plasma-derived serum from hypertensive rats differentially increases growth of cultured arteriolar smooth muscle.

A role for humoral factors in the arterial hypertrophy accompanying hypertension has been suggested, but direct evidence is lacking. We measured [3H]thymidine incorporation of growth-arrested smooth muscle cells, cultured from renal preglomerular arterioles of normal rats and exposed for 12 h to 10% platelet-poor plasma-derived serum (PDS) from male rats with early, benign, one-kidney, one-clip hypertension and paired one-kidney normotensive control rats. In the presence of low background concentrations (1-2%) of fetal calf serum, PDS from hypertensive rats increased [3H]thymidine incorporation up to 117% more than PDS from normotensive rats (P < 0.

Culture of rat mesenteric arteriolar smooth muscle cells: effects of platelet-derived growth factor, angiotensin, and nitric oxide on growth.

We cultured smooth muscle cells as explants from rat mesenteric arterioles (40-200 microns in diameter) obtained by injecting a suspension of iron oxide intraarterially and magnetically separating the arterioles after collagenase digestion of adventitial tissue. In third-passaged cells we ascertained smooth muscle purity of > 98% by characteristic morphology, contraction responses, and specific immunofluorescence staining. Treatment of growth-arrested (in 0.