Heart Failure Clinical Trials

Background: Fluid overload, especially pulmonary congestion, is one of the main contributors into heart failure (HF) readmission risk and it is a clinical challenge for clinicians. The Remote dielectric sensing (ReDS) system is a novel electromagnetic energy-based technology that can accurately quantify changes in lung fluid concentration noninvasively. Previous non-randomized studies suggest that ReDS-guided management has the potential to reduce readmissions in HF patients recently discharged from the hospital. Aims: To test whether a ReDS-guided strategy during HF admission is superior to the standard of care during a 1-month follow up. Methods: The ReDS-SAFE HF trial is an investigator-initiated, single center, single blind, 2-arm randomized clinical trial, in which ~240 inpatients with acutely decompensated HF at Mount Sinai Hospital will be randomized to a) standard of care strategy, with a discharge scheme based on current clinical practice, or b) ReDS-guided strategy, with a discharge scheme based on specific target value given by the device on top of the current clinical practice. ReDS tests will be performed for all study patients, but results will be blinded for treating physicians in the "standard of care" arm. The primary outcome will be a composite of unplanned visit for HF that lead to the use of intravenous diuretics, hospitalization for worsening HF, or death from any cause at 30 days after discharge. Secondary outcomes including the components of the primary outcome alone, length of stay, quality of life, time-averaged proportional change in the natriuretic peptides plasma levels, and safety events as symptomatic hypotension, diselectrolytemias or worsening of renal function. Conclusions: The ReDS-SAFE HF trial will help to clarify the efficacy of a ReDS-guided strategy during HF-admission to improve the short-term prognosis of patients after a HF admission. Read Less

Columbia University Medical Center is conducting a pilot clinical research study that will assess the use of the medication metformin for heart failure in patients who are not diabetic and have no evidence of insulin resistance. Patients will received either the study drug metformin or placebo for 4 months. During the study, the patients will undergo extensive testing that will include symptom assesment, exercise capacity, echocardiography, cardiac PET imaging and blood tests. Read Less

Ivabradine (IVA) has been shown to decrease the risk of hospitalizations for worsening Heart Failure and was associated with a trend towards improved mortality in the SHIFT1 trial. SHIFT1 excluded patients within 4 weeks of hospital discharge, so the efficacy and safety of IVA in this setting is less clear. In today's health care environment more and more patients that present to the Emergency Department (ED) for mild Acute Heart Failure (AHF) are being placed into observation unit and subsequently discharged, or discharged outright from the ED. This is not only a growing segment of patients, but also represents an important window of opportunity to intervene with a potentially effective therapy. Moreover, at this point in a patient's experience (being discharged after getting treated for exacerbation of Heart Failure), it's not clear that beta blockers (BB) should yet be increased/started due to the recent state of exacerbation. Standard treatment of worsened heart failure presenting to the ED or urgent care includes diuretics (e. g. furosemide) and vasodilators (e.g. ACE-I, ARB, Hydralazine/Isosorbide or ARNi), but according to usual standard of care, titration of beta blockade is often reserved for outpatient follow up after a period of demonstrated stability (in the ambulatory setting). This is in contradistinction to hospitalized patients, where patients have been observed by the treating team for days, presumably show stability and improvement, and starting low dose BB at the time of hospital discharge has been shown to be safe. As such these ED/Observation discharge patients are often not optimal candidates for intensification of BB at the time of release, and could be considered to be at maximally tolerated BB dose (for at least for 2-4 weeks). This may represent a vulnerable period for these patients; its unknown in the setting of Observation discharge but evidence from hospitalized patients indicates that the highest daily risk of rehospitalization is in the days just after discharge. IVA may be effective post observation unit management (where lower risk Heart Failure (HF) patients are typically placed), to reduce heart rate (without decreasing contractility, such as a BB would) to help reduce the risk of hospitalization or emergency care, but safety and efficacy (in terms of heart rate lowering) in this setting has not been previously explored. Additionally, the SHIFT1 trial lacked African Americans and this unique patient population has not been previously studied with IVA. The investigating sites serve a predominantly African American patient population. Therefore the proposed study represents an important opportunity to gather data on IVA effect in this understudied group of patients. Read Less