Remote monitoring is becoming increasingly important for management of chronic heart failure patients. Recently, hemodynamic monitoring by measuring intracardiac filling pressures has been gaining attention. It is believed that hemodynamic congestion precedes clinical congestion by several weeks and that remote hemodynamic monitoring therefore enables clinicians to intervene in an early stage and prevent heart failure hospitalizations. The CardioMEMS HF system (Abbott, CA, USA) is a sensor capable of measuring pulmonary artery pressures as a surrogate of left ventricular filling pressures. Clinical evidence for CardioMEMS has been convincing in terms of efficacy and safety. This article provides detailed information on the CardioMEMS HF system and summarizes all available evidence of this promising technique.
Keywords: CardioMEMS™; chronic heart failure; hemodynamics; remote monitoring; telemonitoring.
Chronic heart failure, a disease in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood, affects millions of people worldwide and is associated with high rates of illness and death. The main problem of patients with chronic heart failure is the body’s storage of excess fluid that leads to hospital admissions. These hospital admissions are expensive and bad in the long run. Doctors need to discover excess fluid as early as possible, preferably from a distance, so that patients can be kept out of the hospital. Unfortunately, methods for this are missing. The CardioMEMS™ HF system, a pressure sensor, was developed to watch for changes in a patient’s fluid state from a distance. This article gives thorough information about the CardioMEMS HF system.