Preliminary results of the study MEETinCY

Abstract

Background: Even though heart failure (HF) management programmes have been improved and proved their efficient, no such proramme has been offered untilrecently in Cyprus. Since 2008 MEETinCY research programme is the first one in Cyprus and it is also a nurse-led management programme for HF patients in Cyprus.Purpose: To determine the effect of a structured educational intervention and / ortelephone follow-up programme for patients with HF.Methods: The present study is a randomized control trial with various interventions and longitudinal monitoring. As a part of the larger MEETinCY research project, sam-pling was extracted from the parent sample, which was conducted between April2014 and June 2014, using the electronic medical records of patients of five government hospitals. Total acute events of HF decompensation including their clinicaland demographic characteristics were recorded in 12 and 24 weeks post discharge.Additional information to support the existence or not of decompensation, if needed,was provided by patients and their relatives, through telephone calls. Events were classified as decompensation of pre-existing HF, or decompensation from othercauses.Results: A number of 195 Cypriot HF patients, who received educational inter-vention and / or telephone follow up calls. were recruited. A reduction of instantrisk of HF decompensation at 3 months in 51% [HR: 0,49 (95CI: 0,27-0,88](p = 0,001), was found in the group of telephone follow up, compared to con-trol group. There was no difference between groups regarding the occurrenceof death [Control n = 1 (1,8%) vs Intervention n = 2 (2,2%) p = 1], the total vis-its to emergency department (p = 0,52), the total readmissions (p = 0,52), and thecumulative events (visits & readmissions) (p = 0,79). No statistically significant dif-ference was found in the mean hospital length of stay [Control 6,17 ± 8,2 vs Inter-vention 6,54 ± 9,5 (p = 0.874)]. Unfortunately, t he promising results of the beneficial effect of the i ntervention in disease-free survival time for the first 3 monthsafter randomization and perspective monitoring, does not appear to be maintainedfor long.Conclusions: The present study results showed that advanced nurses in HF whoapply structured educational programmes combined with telephone follow up, canenhance the outcome of patients with HF.