Implementation of international transtelephonic ECG platform for patients with ischemic heart disease

Abstract

Ischemic heart disease in European countries over decades causes up to 55% of all cases of sudden death and also has a high rate of mortality, morbidity, and hospital admission. Patients with such chronic diseases also require intensive home care facilities from community nurses. The aim was to establish international multilingual platform for transtelephonic ECG system as an alternative solution for home care and assess its performance. Methods. During this pilot study, the international toll-free line between Lithuania and Germany was established, and practical applicability of the tele-ECG device was tested. Transtelephonic ECG system was implemented between Telemedicine Center in Bad Segeberg (Bad Segeberg Clinic, Germany), the Call Center in Kaunas at the Hospital of Kaunas University of Medicine, and a patient residence. Results. Over a 6-month follow-up period, 34 patients were recruited. Following the ECG transmission, 86 teleconsultations were done. During the study, a total of 329 ECGs were sent by the patients; out of them, 14 ECGs were with clinical changes. Technical problems due to insufficient patient training, telecommunication systems, acoustic data transmission, and device itself were reported. Up to 23% of ECGs sent by patients were unreadable and not applicable for further clinical analysis. Conclusions. Our study showed the potential of telemedicine facilities to overcome the problems of access that makes the technique so potentially useful, but for telemonitoring application at patient homes in a wider population, it needs to be improved in terms of technical performance, transmission and analysis automatization.

Application of Handheld Tele-ECG for Health Care Delivery in Rural India

“…This is in light of the fact that the pilot study showed 99% correlation between tele-ECG and conventional ECG. Moreover, a previous studyreported 76% consistently normal ECGs [ 29 ], similar to 70% outlined in our study.…”

“…Our study had 80% good quality ECG and only 20% were of moderate quality that is comparable to existing literature, both of which had 77% good quality transmission [ 29 , 30 ] but lesser than Alte et al who reported 94% good ECGs [ 31 ]. The transmission rate in our study is 100%, only reported in one other study that showed no technical difficulties or transmission failures [ 32 ].…”

The Role of Standard 12-lead ECG in a Telecardiology Consultation Service

“…In-hospital telecardiology is used between small hospitals in rural regions and main hospitals (Zaliunas et al, 2009). Telemedicine here has the potential to improve access to echocardiography diagnoses in the intensive care unit, emergency room and newborn nursery (Sekar & Vilvanathan, 2007).…”

Transtelephonic electrocardiography in the management of patients with acute coronary syndrome

“…The prehospital primary diagnosis of STEMI is usually 39 based on the medical history, the physical examination and by telephone, which is decoded to a standard ECG on a 54 computer in a cardiac centre [3], where everything is disease [4][5][6][7], in the management of out-of-hospital chest 60 pain emergencies [8,9] and for the detection of atrial TTECG. In these cases, the PCI centre was given only a brief 161 notice about the patient transfer via the regular telephone.…”