Remote monitoring of chronic heart failure patients: invasive versus non-invasive tools for optimising patient management

Exacerbations of chronic heart failure (HF) with the necessity for hospitalisation impact hospital resources significantly. Despite all of the achievements in medical management and non-pharmacological therapy that improve the outcome in HF, new strategies are needed to prevent HF-related hospitalisations by keeping stable HF patients out of the hospital and focusing resources on unstable HF patients. Remote monitoring of these patients could provide the physicians with an additional tool to intervene adequately and promptly. Results of telemonitoring to date are inconsistent, especially those of telemonitoring with traditional non-haemodynamic parameters. Recently, the CardioMEMS device (Abbott Inc., Atlanta, GA, USA), an implantable haemodynamic remote monitoring sensor, has shown promising results in preventing HF-related hospitalisations in chronic HF patients hospitalised in the previous year and in New York Heart Association functional class III in the United States. This review provides an overview of the available evidence on remote monitoring in chronic HF patients and future perspectives for the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of these strategies.