Topics:
Heart Failure (HF)
Session number: 1308
Session title: How to monitor patients remotely in daily practice
Authors: Ekman, Inger (Goteborg, SE)
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Symptoms are by definition subjective, and clinicians should recognise and value their importance to patients. Most clinicians recognise that many symptoms are poorly related to the underlying somatic disorder e.g. myocardial function. As a consequence, in order to identify patients with worsening chronic heart failure properly the development of diagnostic tools such as biomarkers are used to confirm or exclude the disease. Little consideration is given trying to understand how patients’ experiences may impact upon both acute and chronic presentations as well as effects of treatment. Telephone contact by trained nurses seems so far as good as tele-monitoring of signs. The content of such monitoring needs more development. The technological development may offer tools to access better information not only of signs but symptoms.
Teaching objective of the lecture:
Relief of symptoms are important priorities for patients with chronic heart failure as recognised by the European agency for the evaluation of medical products (EMEA) as well as the American Food and Drug administration (FDA). Therefore methods to properly assess and evaluate patients self reported symptoms needs to be further developed. New technological development more often focus on collecting sophisticated data than implementation among patients.
Take home messages:
- Symptoms are by definition subjective, and clinicians should recognise and value their importance to patients
- Symptoms are important predictors of prognosis
- The technological development may offer clinicians tools to get information about patients´symptoms
The content of this article reflects the personal opinion of the
author/s and is not necessarily the official position of the
European Society of Cardiology.