Patients with heart failure require close follow-up and frequent adjustments to medications to prevent heart emergencies. Now, with the CardioMEMS heart failure system, a remote monitoring device alerts doctors when a patient’s heart failure is getting worse, before symptoms appear — helping patients avoid hospital readmission and receive better at-home management.
Matthew Katz, MD, an interventional cardiologist with Atlantic Health, explains why CardioMEMS continues to benefit both heart patients and providers.
What is CardioMEMS, and how does it work?
CardioMEMS is a device that helps monitor changes in blood pressure and sends the data to a cardiologist.
“It’s a remote pressure sensor that we place in the pulmonary artery,” explains Dr. Katz. “It gives us real-time information on what a patient’s pressures are inside the heart, so we can make real-time decisions using objective, not subjective, measures.”
Here’s how it works:
- During a 20–30-minute minimally invasive procedure (right heart catheterization), an interventional cardiologist implants the device in the pulmonary artery. The device is the size of a paperclip and doesn’t require a battery.
- After the procedure, patients typically go home the same day without any restrictions. They must take blood thinners for a month but can then stop taking them unless they have other conditions that require blood-thinning medication.
- Each day, patients lie on a special pillow at home for about 30 seconds. The pillow contains electronics that connect to the implanted device, record pressure and send data to a doctor remotely.
- Dr. Katz reviews this data twice each week, looking for trends and making medication changes remotely as needed.
“Oftentimes, what happens with CardioMEMS is a patient’s pressure starts going up a couple of weeks before they have symptoms,” Dr. Katz says. “We call them, and they’re asymptomatic. This is ideal because by the time they have symptoms and come to the office for an emergency visit, we’re two weeks behind on their therapy. And then they end up in the hospital because we can’t safely manage their condition as an outpatient.”
Helping more cardiologists manage congestive heart failure
Heart failure patients receive care from a general cardiologist or a heart failure specialist when necessary. At Atlantic Health, CardioMEMS makes it easier for our cardiology team to deliver high-quality heart failure management across all points of care.
“CardioMEMS has transformed the way we monitor and manage heart failure patients in the outpatient setting,” says Abhishek Singh, MD PhD, advanced heart failure specialist and medical director of the Atlantic Health Heart Success Program, “The team expertly implants the device. We collaborate with our cardiologists to remotely monitor and manage patients in real time using objective data to optimize therapy based on approved guidelines. It creates seamless, continuous care — combining excellence with community access and heart failure expertise that keeps patients stable, close to home and out of the hospital.”
Fewer hospital readmissions and lower costs
Because the needs of heart failure patients can change quickly, without timely, updated treatments, patients can experience repeated hospital admissions and readmissions. Avoiding readmission is important because it often leads to poor patient outcomes, including increased risk of death or future heart failure complications.
Data shows that CardioMEMS reduces hospital readmissions due to heart failure. Doctors are able to respond to patient needs faster before they become more serious. Additionally, fewer admissions mean hospitals can reduce costs and allocate more resources to other patients.
Better treatment for heart failure and kidney disease
A lot of patients with heart failure also have chronic kidney disease. Having both conditions can be extremely difficult to manage because medications must be strong enough to treat heart failure symptoms but not be renal toxic.
“When we’re implanting CardioMEMS in patients with concomitant heart disease and kidney disease, they tend to do much better,” explains Dr. Katz. “A lot of them have been undertreated out of fear of injuring their kidneys. We’ve also had instances where CardioMEMS helps prevent overtreatment because we see pulmonary pressures are dropping too much, and we’re able to back off medications before they cause kidney injury.”
CardioMEMS has also helped with co-management of care between Cardiology and Nephrology at Atlantic Health. With objective data from the device, providers are usually in agreement about treatments, working together to manage patients for better outcomes.
Related news articles
