NCT00563745

Telemedicine for Patients With Chronic Respiratory Insufficiency

Randomised Trial on Telemedicine to Save Health Care Requests for Patients With Severe Chronic Respiratory Failure.

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 240 (actual)
• Sponsor: Michele Vitacca · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 12 Years – 85 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

In unstable patients needing oxygen and/or home mechanical ventilation, a nurse-centred TM programme (supported by continuous availability of a call centre and a pulsed oxygen system) is cost/effective saving health care resources.

Detailed description

Background: Integrated care and strict follow up have been recommended for frail patients with chronic respiratory failure (CRF) discharged at home. Objectives: To evaluate impact and costs on health care resources of a telemedicine programme (TM) for severe patients discharged at home with oxygen and/or home mechanical ventilation (HMV) with a high risk of hospital readmission. Design: Prospective randomised controlled trial. Setting: Respiratory Rehabilitation Unit S. Maugeri Foundation between May 2004 and March 2007. Participants: 240 CRF patients will be randomised into an intervention group (TM) and a control Group, which received current usual care (educational plan, 3 months outpatient visits). Interventions: one year TM with continuous (h 24) on call accessibility to a nurse and/or a pulmonologist, a web-based call centre and a pulse oxymetry tracing. Main outcome measures: survival, admissions to emergency room (ER), hospitalisations, urgent general practitioner (GP) calls, home relapses; probability to remain free from the above events will be also compared among groups. TM and health Care System costs as customer satisfaction will be also collected.

Conditions

• Chronic Respiratory Failure

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	telemedicine program	One year TM with continuous (h 24) on call accessibility to a nurse and/or a pulmonologist, a web-based call centre and a pulse oxymetry tracing will be provided.

Timeline

• Start date: 2004-04-01
• Primary completion: 2005-04-01
• Completion: 2007-04-01
• First posted: 2007-11-26
• Last updated: 2015-03-06

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy