Main Page/Remote Monitoring of Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillators : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Clinical Outcomes

This article is a systematic review of the randomized controlled trials comparing Remote Monitoring (RM) with In-office (IO) follow-up of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD).

Background

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD) have become the standard of care therapy for primary and secondary prevention of sudden cardiac death. Remote monitoring (RM) of ICD devices has been proposed as an alternative strategy to reduce the need for routine device follow-up visits while providing continuous surveillance and immediate problem notification. ICDs can be interrogated automatically using wireless data transfer to the remote monitor by treating clinicians through an Internet-based interface or provide automatically generated clinician alerts.In the current study, the authors conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of Randomized control trials comparing clinical outcomes in ICD patients undergoing RM with those receiving conventional IO follow-up.

Method

The authors conducted a systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, and the Cochrane databases to identify RCTs comparing RM with conventional IO follow-up in ICD patients.