Bluetooth Technology Helps Monitor Hearts

Heart-failure patients have the importance of monitoring their weight and blood pressure every single day drilled into them. Weight gain means fluid retention, both a sign of and danger from a failing heart. High blood pressure means the heart must work too hard.

So Larry C. Bybee gets on the scale first thing in the morning, then slips the blood-pressure cuff over his arm. But he doesn't write anything down.

The technology itself takes notes for him. Then it passes the information on so that the cardiologist who manages his care, Dr. Robert Fowles from LDS Hospital's Utah Heart Clinic, can look at it whenever he wants.

When Bybee sleeps, his combination pacemaker-defibrillator collects its own set of data to share with the doctor over the Internet, too.

It's part of the new Latitude Patient Management system created by Boston Scientific, the first Bluetooth wireless-based system approved by the Food and Drug Administration to monitor heart-failure patients at home.

Heart-device data collection isn't new. For some time, when a patient has gone in for an office visit, the doctor has been able to wave a wand over a pacemaker-defibrillator and get the information the device has been storing on heart function. The wireless technology, though, is new. And so is the automatic transfer of weight and blood-pressure information.

"This is a wonderful advance for both doctor and patient," Fowles said. "It makes care much more complete for my patients with heart failure."

Bybee was in robust good health until mid-August, when he noticed that his feet were puffy because he was retaining water. Not long after, he woke up in the night, struggling to breathe. At the hospital, following a battery of tests, he was told he'd had a very severe heart attack that he didn't even know about, probably several months before. His heart was failing.

Next: Tests for skipped heartbeats >