According to the Heart Failure Association of America, 6.7 million Americans ages 20 and up live with heart failure; this number is projected to reach 10.3 million by 2040, and 11.4 million by 2050. Lifetime risk of heart failure has skyrocketed to 24%, impacting about one in every four Americans.¹
The costs of heart failure are equally high, estimated at $30.7 billion and projected to reach $69.8 billion by 2030, a 127% increase.² The costs continue to expand when heart failure readmission rates are taken into consideration. In 2020, heart failure had 202,200 30-day readmissions, the second-highest total among adult conditions.³
Reducing readmissions aligns with significant improvements in outcomes for heart failure patients. To this end, new heart failure guidelines recommend conducting pulmonary assessments to determine fluid levels in the lungs at discharge and outpatient follow-up.
And yet, current methods of conducting pulmonary congestion assessments remain rudimentary, relying on subjective evaluations and guesswork rather than quantitative ones that can help them recover at home. There’s a better way to help heart failure patients; a noninvasive lung fluid monitoring method that puts patient care first, wherever care is delivered.
How Current Assessment Methods Shortchange Heart Failure Patients
Under traditional assessments, clinicians rely on familiar clinical manifestations such as dyspnea, orthopnea, systemic edema, jugular venous distention, and third heart sound. But none of these symptoms are truly indicative of congestion levels; increased cardiac filling pressures are an early indicator of hemodynamic congestion; this precedes congestive symptoms by days or weeks.⁴
Unfortunately, congestion is often difficult to assess, especially when symptoms are mild.⁵ This becomes even more problematic for patients, as the clinical symptoms and signs clinicians rely on are late manifestations of congestion, and the most common tools used for assessments don’t allow for use outside clinical settings.⁶
Using existing tools such as radiography and natriuretic peptides measurements, patients may present as stable initially, only to be readmitted thereafter. Routine diuretic management based on patient response and laboratory criteria can result in both overtreatment and undertreatment.⁷
Thankfully, the pulmonary congestion assessment landscape is rapidly changing. The ReDS™ Pro System from Sensible Medical offers caregivers a new, simpler way to assess pulmonary congestion early on. With ReDS, clinicians and caregivers can assess lung fluid levels without aggressive diuretic methods or invasive diagnostic tests, wherever care is provided.
Zeroing In On Pulmonary Congestion at the Point of Care
In response to the current limitations of pulmonary congestion assessments, ReDS offers a fast, easy, and non-invasive way to determine fluid levels in the lungs across nearly every setting, from hospitals to home care.
ReDS relies on radio frequency (RF) to provide direct, objective, and accurate assessments for advanced monitoring and management of heart failure patients. The non-invasive, point-of-care measurement technology assesses pulmonary congestion in just 45 seconds, empowering caregivers to make more informed decisions before later symptoms manifest.
Clinical trials have shown demonstrable reductions in readmissions using ReDS, including a lower 30-day cardiovascular readmission rate; in one study of 80 patients, 65% also had medications adjusted post-assessment.⁸ A multi-facility clinical study further revealed that ReDS helped reduce overall readmissions by 87%.⁹
Setting a New Patient Care Standard with ReDS
By shifting from subjective assessments that rely on downstream symptoms to measurable, easily quantifiable lung fluid level monitoring, ReDS introduces a new, patient-centric standard of care. Its non-invasive design slips easily over a patient’s torso, allowing assessments to be conducted without discomfort to patients or disruptions to clinical workflows across the continuum of care.
Connect with us to learn more about how ReDS can help transform your pulmonary congestion assessments and set your heart failure patients up for success.
Sources
- Cardiology Experts Warn of Rising Heart Failure Rates and Worsening Disparities in New 2024 Report. HFSA 2024. https://hfsa.org/cardiology-experts-warn-rising-heart-failure-rates-and-worsening-disparities-new-2024-report
- Jeenal Patel, PharmD, BCGP. Heart failure population health considerations. The American Journal of Managed Care, May 26, 2021. DOI 10.37765/ajmc.2021.88673 https://www.ajmc.com/view/heart-failure-population-health-considerations
- H. Joanna Jiang, Ph.D., and Marguerite L. Barrett, M.S. Clinical Conditions With Frequent, Costly Hospital Readmissions by Payer, 2020. HCUP Statistical Brief #307, AHRQ. https://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb307-readmissions-2020.jsp
- Pieter Martens, Wilfried Mullens. How to tackle congestion in acute heart failure. Korean Journal of Internal Medicine. 2018;33(3):462–473. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29627971/
- Girerd et al., Integrative Assessment of Congestion in Heart Failure Throughout the Patient Journey. JACC: Heart Failure, Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018, Pages 273-285. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213177917306881
- Pirrotta et al., Pulmonary Congestion Assessment in Heart Failure: Traditional and New Tools. Diagnostics (Basel). 2021 Jul 21;11(8):1306. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics11081306 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8394474
- Alvarez-Garcia, J. et al. Remote dielectric sensing before and after discharge in patients with acutely decompensated heart failure: The ReDS-SAFE HF trial. JACC: Heart Failure, 12(4), 695–706. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38430084/
- Lala et al. Early use of remote dielectric sensing after hospitalization to reduce heart failure readmissions. ESC Heart Failure, 8, 1047–1054. DOI 10.1002/ehf2.13026 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33336881/
- http://www.internationaljournalofcardiology.com/article/S0167-5273(16)32225-2/pdf
