Telecardiology improves clinical management in pre-hospital settings, facilitates echocardiography transmission, and reduces readmissions in post-hospital care for heart failure and arrhythmias.
Does telecardiology improve clinical management and outcomes across different cardiological settings?
Telecardiology is a versatile tool that improves clinical management, decision-making, and patient outcomes across various cardiovascular conditions and healthcare settings.
Among the wide range of medical specialties in which telemedicine has been successfully applied, cardiology can be considered as one of the most important fields of application. Through the transmission of clinical data and the electrocardiogram, telecardiology allows access to a real-time assessment (teleconsultation) without any need to travel for both patient and cardiologist. This review discusses the impact of telecardiology in different clinical settings of application. Pre-hospital telecardiology has proved to be useful either in the clinical management of remote patients with acute coronary syndrome or in supporting the decision-making process of general practitioners. In the setting of in-hospital telecardiology, most of the applications refer to real-time echocardiography transmissions between rural small hospitals and tertiary care centres, particularly for the diagnosis or exclusion of congenital heart disease in newborns. Finally, many trials show that post-hospital telecardiology improves outcomes and reduces re-admissions or outpatient contacts in patients with heart failure, arrhythmias or implantable devices.
Molinari et al. (Fri,) conducted a review in Cardiovascular diseases. Telecardiology was evaluated. Telecardiology improves clinical management in pre-hospital settings, facilitates echocardiography transmission, and reduces readmissions in post-hospital care for heart failure and arrhythmias.