Telehealth Interventions for Cardiac Surgery (TICS) v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Telehealth for Pre- and Post-Operative Monitoring of Cardiac Surgery Patients - A Randomised Controlled Trial
IRAS ID
319624
Contact name
Bilal Kirmani
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 10 days
Research summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated long waiting lists for treatments across all specialties in the UK, including cardiac surgery. Patients awaiting treatment for heart conditions are amongst the highest risk whilst awaiting their operation and some patients may deteriorate on the waiting list prior to having surgery.
Many patients who would ordinarily have surgery within 4 weeks may have to wait several months and during this period, they may have little input from their surgeon or primary care doctor. Using smartphones and readily available home monitoring equipment, telehealth allows these patients to be reviewed by a centralised Hub of trained nurses, monitoring for deterioration and also providing opportunities for optimisation such as smoking cessation, diabetic optimisation and exercise advise. This can reduce the chances for deterioration before and after surgery by identifying complications while they are in their early, treatable phase.
This study aims to recruit patients awaiting cardiac surgery and randomly allocate them to either receiving monitoring with a telehealth device, or to receive standard care. Outcomes for comparison will include patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes to assess whether telehealth can identify and pre-empt serious deteriorations and improve patient fitness for surgery.
The telehealth innovation is already funded for piloting by NHSx via an Innovation Fund, and the trial costs are incorporated into the infrastructure of that funding. It will recruit in the centre funded for the pilot work: Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital.
REC name
Wales REC 6
REC reference
22/WA/0355
Date of REC Opinion
14 Dec 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion