Arrhythmias and cardiomyopathy: when arrhythmias come first

Home care for heart failure: can caregiver education prevent hospital admissions? A randomized trial in primary care

AIM

To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of a low-complexity, low-cost model of caregiver education in primary care, targeted to reduce hospitalizations of heart failure patients.

METHODS

A cluster-randomized, controlled, open trial was proposed to general practitioners, who were invited to identify patients with heart failure, exclusively managed at home and continuously attended by a caregiver. Participating general practitioners were then randomized to: usual treatment; caregiver education (educational session for recognizing early symptoms/signs of heart failure, with recording in a diary of a series of patient parameters, including body weight, blood pressure, heart rate). The patients were observed at baseline and during a 12-month follow-up.

RESULTS

Three hundred and thirteen patients were enrolled (163 in the intervention, 150 in the usual care group), 63% women, mean age 85.3 ± 7.7 years. At the end of the 12-month follow-up, a trend towards a lower incidence of hospitalizations was observed in the intervention group (hazard ratio 0.73; 95% CI 0.53-1.01 P = 0.061). Subgroup analysis showed that for patients with persistent/permanent atrial fibrillation, age less than 90 years or Barthel score equal to or greater than 50 a significant lower hospital admission rate occurred in the intervention group (hazard ratio 0.63; 95% CI 0.39-0.99; P = 0.048, hazard ratio 0.66; 95% CI 0.45-0.97; P = 0.036 and hazard ratio 0.61; 95% CI 0.41-0.89; P = 0.011, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Caregivers training for early recognition of symptoms/signs of worsening heart failure may be effective in reducing hospitalizations, although the benefit was evident only in specific patient subgroups (with persistent/permanent atrial fibrillation, age <90 years or Barthel score ≥ 50), with only a positive trend in the whole cohort.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03389841.

Role of microRNA in diabetic cardiomyopathy: From mechanism to intervention

Diabetic cardiomyopathy is a chronic and irreversible heart complication in diabetic patients, and is characterized by complex pathophysiologic events including early diastolic dysfunction, cardiac hypertrophy, ventricular dilation and systolic dysfunction, eventually resulting in heart failure. Despite these characteristics, the underlying mechanisms leading to diabetic cardiomyopathy are still elusive. Recent studies have implicated microRNA, a small and highly conserved non-coding RNA molecule, in the etiology of diabetes and its complications, suggesting a potentially novel approach for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic cardiomyopathy. This brief review aims at capturing recent studies related to the role of microRNA in diabetic cardiomyopathy. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Genetic and epigenetic control of heart failure - edited by Jun Ren & Megan Yingmei Zhang.