CardioExchange Archive

An inexpensive off-the-shelf fitness monitor can help physicians monitor and perhaps customize their treatment of patients after heart surgery, according to a new study from the Mayo Clinic published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Wireless accelerometer in ankle strap. (©2013 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Reprinted with permission)

Although the mobility of patients after surgery has long been recognized as a significant predictor of outcome, the authors of the study note that “there are multiple barriers to acquiring and reporting functional assessments during hospitalization.” Currently, information about mobility is obtained intermittently, often through nursing notes. Wireless data, by contrast, “are objective, acquired, and displayed nearly continuously.”

The new study tested whether a wireless accelerometer (the $100 Fitbit) could measure mobility in the recovery period after heart surgery. The Fitbit was attached to the ankles of 149 patients after they were moved from the intensive care unit to a regular hospital room.

As expected, patients who were later discharged to go home walked much further than patients who were discharged to a skilled nursing facility or home health care. The difference between the groups emerged on the first day of the study and persisted throughout the hospital stay. On day two, for instance, patients who ended up going home on their own walked 675 steps, compared with 108 steps for the other groups. In addition, patients with the shortest length of hospital stay walked significantly more than the patients with the longest stays.

The investigators write that although their results “are not unexpected,” they are nevertheless valuable as a “first demonstration that remote monitoring of mobility is effective to assess hospital surgical recovery.”

They conclude:

“Wireless monitoring of mobility after major surgery was easy and practical. There was a significant relationship between the number of steps taken in the early recovery period, length of stay, and dismissal disposition in an older cardiac surgery population. This opens the door for changing recovery models and improving outcomes in surgical practice.”

In a press release, the senior author of the study and the chair of surgery at Mayo, Claude Deschamps, said:

“The integration of these types of technologies with the ability to acquire, aggregate, and report data in ways that make it readily actionable will change how health care is delivered and managed. The benefits this technology brings to most elderly hospitalized patients will be tremendous. The technology is already robust and reliable, and the next 3 years will bring the software integration to allow the data to easily populate electronic medical records or patient dashboards.”