HealthDay News — A remote clinical management program successfully delivered significant improvements in blood pressure (BP) control during the pandemic, according to a study published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Simin Gharib Lee, MD, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues assessed the pandemic’s impact on an existing remote hypertension management program’s effectiveness and adaptability. The analysis included 1256 patients (605 enrolled in the 6 months before the pandemic shutdown in March 2020 and 651 in the 6 months after).
The researchers found that overall, among enrolled patients with sustained hypertension, 51.1% reached BP goals. Rates of achieving goal BP improved to 94.6% during the pandemic, from 75.8% prepandemic. During the pandemic, mean baseline home BP was 141.7/81.9 mm Hg vs 139.8/82.2 prepandemic, and it fell ~16/9 mm Hg in both periods. During the pandemic, maintenance was achieved earlier (median 11.8 vs 19.6 weeks). More frequent monthly calls (8.2 vs 3.1) and more monthly home BP recordings per patient (32.4 vs 18.9) were seen during the pandemic vs the prepandemic period.
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“A remote clinical management program was successfully adapted and delivered significant improvements in BP control and increased home BP monitoring despite a nationally observed disruption of traditional hypertension care,” the authors write. “Such programs have the potential to transform hypertension management and care delivery.”
