Senada Malik ’15 conducts study of home-based intervention for congestive heart failure patients
As part of a research team, Senada Malik (Master of Public Health, ‘15) conducted a research study entitled “Effect of Home-Based Follow up Intervention on Readmissions and Mortality in Heart Failure Patients". The results were presented at the 2014 American Heart Association scientific sessions in Chicago, Illinois.
The study consisted of a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The methods entailed searching for RCTs from Medline (indexed and non-indexed), EMBASE, and PsychINFO. Eligibility was based on whether the RCT had an impact on home-based intervention in congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. In addition, the sample size of each RCT had to be greater than 50. All tele-medicine monitoring were excluded.
After the eligible RCTs were identified, they were evaluated against a priori inclusion criteria and all disagreements were settled by discussions between the research team.
This is the first meta-analysis conducted that consists of only home-based interventions. It revealed that home-based follow up intervention resulted in a 23% reduction in mortality and a decreased readmission rate of 36%. Thus, Malik and her team concluded that their meta-analysis of RCTs provides evidence that home-based follow up intervention in CHF patients reduces readmission rates and improves survival.