Month: October 2012

From the HealthPartners, Health Improvement1 and the HealthPartners Research Foundation, Minneapolis, MN2 Hypertension is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and deaths worldwide. Advances in technology have added telemedicine as a tool for managing hypertension.

The effectiveness of telemedicine depends on patients’ ability to adhere to schedules of home monitoring and case management. Participants with uncontrolled hypertension in the intervention arm of a randomized trial who completed 6 months of follow-up were included in this analysis.They were asked to measure their blood pressure (BP) a minimum of 6 times per week using a telemonitor that transmitted the readings to their pharmacist case manager. Hypertensive patients in this study had high adherence to telemonitoring (73% took at least 6 BP readings per week) and phone visits (88% of expected visits were attended). In a multivariate analysis, older age, male sex, and some college education predicted better telemonitoring adherence. White non-Hispanic race ⁄ ethnicity predicted better adherence to phone visits with pharmacist case managers. Telemonitoring adherence and phone adherence were highly correlated; participants who did not send readings on schedule were more likely

to skip at least one phone visit with their pharmacist case manager. The findings from this analysis indicate that hypertensive patients in this study were able to achieve and maintain high adherence to both the telemonitoring and the phone case management visits.

– J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2012;14:668– 674. 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Read the full article on the Telemonitoring clinical trial here

Hypertension Sydney 2012 was held at Darling Harbour this year. It was the 24th meeting of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) in collaboration with the 9th Congress of the Asian Pacific Society of Hypertension (APSH) and the 34th Annual Scientific Meeting of the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia (HBPRCA).

Hypertension Sydney 2012 offered a variety of workshops for select delegates and sponsors to take an active role in the meeting program via various workshops.

The program for the meeting was developed by both local and international program committees. These members have extensive expertise in a wide range of blood pressure-related topics, ranging from epidemiology and clinical research through to mechanistic studies. In addition to offering a wide-ranging program, the meeting provided opportunities for young investigators to present their latest work during the poster sessions, the mini-oral poster sessions and the e-poster sessions.

A large number of the programs included presentations on both Ambulatory BP Monitoring and Home BP monitoring; including their benefits over GP based BP monitoring. A&D Medical’s involvement was enhanced through the Hypertension Sydney Exhibition, held in Hall 5 at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (SCEC) from 30th September through to the 4th October 2012.