Abstract

Background: Telemonitoring has been recently shown to improve outcomes and reduce hospital admission rate in cardiac patients. Effect of telemonitoring on early hospital readmission and graft outcomes in kidney transplant population is not well studied.
Methods: In this retrospective observational study, we compared 167 kidney transplant recipients who were discharged with telemonitoring to 191 historic controls with no telemonitoring. All telemonitored patients were monitored with the use of CardioCom device, by a registered nurse trained in transplant and home care. To assess the impact of the telemonitoring on readmission rate, logistic regression analysis was performed. Survival analysis was conducted to assess impact on one-year graft and patient survival.
Results: Of 358 total patients, 32.1% (n=115) had early readmission. Of these, 56 of the 167 patients (33.5%) with telemonitoring experienced early readmission, compared to 59 of 191 controls (30.9%). Telemonitoring was associated with slightly higher early readmission compared to control group, which was not statistically significant (OR=1.13, 95% CI=0.72-1.76, p=0.59). Telemonitored and control patients had comparable one-year graft and patient survival, 97% vs. 94.2% (HR: 0.51; 95 CI: 0.18-1.48, p=0.22) and 98% vs. 96.3% (HR: 0.32; 95 CI: 0.07-1.55, p=0.14) respectively.
Conclusions: Early post kidney transplant telemonitoring did not show significant reduction in early hospital admission rate or improvement in 1-year patient/ graft survival.

Keywords: Kidney transplantation; Telemedicine; Graft outcome; Hospital re-admission