Patients using the Boston Scientific LATITUDE remote patient management system with wireless telemetry demonstrated significantly lower mortality and fewer hospitalizations than patients with LATITUDE-compatible devices who were not followed on the system, according to results from the PREDICt-RM study (Patient RElated Determinants of ICD Remote Monitoring Utilization and Outcomes).
The results were presented today at Heart Rhythm 2014, the Heart Rhythm Society’s 35th Annual Scientific Sessions in San Francisco.
PREDICt-RM demonstrated a 33% relative reduction in the risk of death in patients with Boston Scientific ICDs and CRT-Ds who were remotely monitored via the LATITUDE wireless remote monitoring system, compared to Boston Scientific ICD and CRT-D patients who were not remotely monitored.
Additionally, these patients experienced a 19% relative reduction in hospitalizations for any cause. The study outcomes were presented by Dr Joseph Akar, associate professor of medicine at Yale University and the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) in New Haven, CT, and are a result of a research collaboration between Yale CORE, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and Boston Scientific.
Akar said that the PREDICt-RM results demonstrate improved outcomes for those ICD and CRT-D patients using the LATITUDE wireless Remote Patient Management system.
"Despite the widespread availability of this technology, we know that it is underutilized. Our hope is that this study may inform clinical practice guidelines and promote the routine use of this technology in daily practice," Dr Akar added.
PREDICt-RM builds on Boston Scientific’s innovation and leadership in clinical science. These results were made possible via a unique research design that linked three large health care databases, illuminating the potential for "big data" and healthcare analytics to advance patient care. PREDICt-RM combined the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) from ACC, CMS data from Medicare, and the Boston Scientific LATITUDE system.
Boston Scientific Rhythm Management chief medical officer Dr Kenneth Stein noted that PREDICt-RM demonstrates that wireless remote monitoring using the LATITUDE system provides a significant benefit to patients and the overall healthcare system.
"We are very excited to have such strong data demonstrating substantially improved survival and reduced hospitalization rates in the patients followed on LATITUDE," Dr Stein added.
The LATITUDE remote patient management system connects a home communicator to the patient’s implanted Boston Scientific device through wireless telemetry, enabling automatic collection of patient data.
The system capabilities include transmitting physiologic data, as well as data gathered from the implanted device to the healthcare team’s LATITUDE website. Boston Scientific provides wireless telemetry across all pacemaker, ICD, and CRT-D implantable devices. The LATITUDE system is the only implanted-device monitoring system with integrated physiologic monitoring of weight and blood pressure in the US.