The follow-up of cardiac devices: what to expect for the future?
1 Department of Cardiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Bielefeld Medical Center, Germany
2 Department of Cardiology and Angiology, University of Bochum, Germany
* Corresponding author. Staedtische Kliniken Bielefeld-Mitte, Teutoburger Strasse 50, 33604 Bielefeld, Germany. Tel: +49 521 5813401; fax: +49 521 5813498. E-mail address: christoph.stellbrink{at}sk-bielefeld.de
The number of implanted cardiac devices has dramatically increased in recent years. Moreover, these devices have developed from simple, fixed-rate pacemakers to multi-programmable systems with an ever-increasing amount of information retrievable and programming options available. With the advent of the implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and cardiac resynchronization therapy, devices have become even more complex. New sensors for heart failure monitoring may be expected to make an important impact and at the same time make follow-ups more time consuming. This will increase the demands on follow-up centres, physicians, technologists, and nurses while there is only a limited workforce available due to budgetary restrictions. Therefore, new ways of patient management after cardiac device implantation are needed. This article discusses what new approaches for patient follow-up are currently being developed and investigated in the clinical arena with an emphasis on telemetric device surveillance.
Key Words: Pacemaker • Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator • Cardiac resynchronization therapy • Telemedicine • Remote monitoring