NCT03560206

Effects of Family Sodium Watcher Program on Outcomes in Heart Failure Patient-Family Caregiver Dyads

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 316 (actual)
• Sponsor: Misook L. Chung · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 21 Years – 90 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The Family Sodium Watcher program in this study is designed to improve adherence to a sodium restricted diet in patients with HF using strategies that educate both patients and family caregivers about sodium monitoring and that stress a gradual progressive adaptation to low sodium food for both patients and family caregivers.

Detailed description

Heart failure (HF) emerged as a significant public health threat in the 1990s and has now reached epidemic proportions. Despite advances in the medical treatment of HF, patients with HF face frequent hospitalizations for acute exacerbations. Inadequate self-care strategies, in particular non-adherence to a sodium restricted diet (SRD), is a main cause of these rehospitalizations. Prior interventions to increase adherence have focused on increasing knowledge about restricting sodium in the diet have met with limited success. Unaddressed by these interventions are the major barriers of measuring and tracking daily sodium intake, family members who continue to eat high sodium diets, and a preference for salty foods-particularly in the elderly who have a decreased sense of taste. It is possible to retrain the taste buds to enjoy low salt foods by gradually reducing the amount of sodium in foods over the course of 16 weeks. This retraining works best with direct involvement and support from family members. The Family Sodium Watcher Program (Family SWaP) proposed in this study incorporates the use of a unique electronic salt monitoring device that easily measures salt content in food-the major source of sodium. The intervention is designed to improve adherence to a SRD by both patients and family caregivers through education and strategies for gradual taste adaptation to low salt foods.

Conditions

• Heart Failure

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Family SWaP intervention	The Family Sodium Watcher Program (Family SWaP) proposed in this study incorporates the use of a unique electronic salt monitoring device that easily measures salt content in food-the major source of sodium. The intervention is designed to improve adherence to a sodium restricted diet by both patients and family caregivers through education and strategies for gradual taste adaptation to low salt foods. The Family SWaP intervention (6 weekly 45-minute sessions followed by 5 bi-weekly booster sessions) will be delivered remotely using a video-conferencing program on an iPad tablet.
BEHAVIORAL	usual care	The usual care group will receive their routine medical and nursing care for heart failure that consists of a recommendation to follow a sodium restricted diet without explicit skills training to do so.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-03-01
• Primary completion: 2020-07-31
• Completion: 2020-07-31
• First posted: 2018-06-18
• Last updated: 2022-02-25
• Results posted: 2022-02-25

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States