Monitoring of patients with chronic heart failure with a wrist-worn data logger.

To improve telemonitoring strategies in patients with chronic heart failure, there is a need for novel parameters and technologies to monitor these patients. Monitoring of physical activity and other parameters such as heart rate variability and sleep, might serve as a useful adjunct to the regular parameters being monitored. This is supported by previous studies in patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), which showed that ICD parameters such as heart rate, heart rate variability and activity are predictive for heart failure readmissions. However, a substantial part of HF patients do not have an ICD or one that features activity monitoring. Therefore the aim of the present study is to evaluate the predictive value of several parameters measured with a wrist-worn data logger for deterioration of heart failure.

We hypothesize that several parameters, measured with a wrist-worn data logger, will be predictive for a heart failure event.

Parameters which are taken into account are: heart rate, activity count, energy expenditure, but also parameters which are not related to physical activity, such as heart rate variability, respiratory rate and sleep parameters.

A heart failure event is defined as a hospital readmission or an uptitration of oral diuretics at the outpatient clinic, due to decompensated heart failure.

Continuous data (24/7) for a period of 3 months after hospital discharge due to an episode of acute decompensated heart failure.

This is a single-center, prospective exploratory proof of concept study.

Patients who are admitted to Máxima Medical Centre due to an episode of decompensated heart failure, and who are meeting the other in- and exclusion criteria, are asked to participate in the present study.

If they consent to participate, they will be asked to wear a non-obtrusive, wrist-worn data logger (Philips Netherlands B.V.) for a period of 3 months from the moment of discharge from the hospital. They will be asked to wear the data logger 24/7 to gather photoplethysmography (PPG) and accelerometry data. These data are translated in several parameters such as: heart rate, heart rate variability, activity count, activity type, energy expenditure, respiratory rate and sleep data.
Patients do not receive feedback or coaching based on the recorded data. After three months the patient will hand in the data logger.

During follow-up the medical records of the participants will be periodically checked to report recurrent heart failure events. A heart failure event is defined as a hospital readmission, or an uptitration of oral diuretics at the outpatient clinic, due to decompensated heart failure.