Leader: Fabrizia Mantovani (UNIMIB); Other collaborator(s): UNIMIB/UNIMOL/BETA80
To maintain and increase the cognitive reserve in patients with respiratory and heart failure and their caregivers, we will monitor cognitive function in the home setting, to screen disabilities in the early stages of their onset. Monitoring of disease-specific risk factors, participation in daily living activities, and the well-being of patient and caregiver will complement the at-home multi-component monitoring approach. As highlighted in task#4 The multidimensionality of HF patients care provision and the need of caregiver management led to the identification of frailty and prefrailty as common ground to assess and monitor dyads status. In the current task we assessed the performance and the usability of a frailty screening tool in patients’ and caregivers’.
Brief description of the activities and of the intermediate results
The customization of a web application for dyads functional assessment, tools for quality of life, caregiver-patient dyad relationship and technology usability to be connected to the e-health patients management platform is underway.
Cognitive assessment for prevention of impairment in the enrolled dyads is part of the multidisciplinary frailty assessment tool developed for dyad assessment.
As previously reported, to prevent patient’s disability and monitor caregiver risk status, a multidimensional monitoring tool will be selected to be added to monitored instrumental parameters in patients with HF and their caregivers.
The e-health based patients and caregiver management platform has almost been completed and coupled with the available wearable monitoring devices. Although not completed, the platform's core functions have been showed in the meeting held in Termoli (CB) on the 12 of september.
STATUS - 31/12/2024
As previously reported multidimensional frailty and prefrailty were selected to assess and monitor dyads status. Among patients enrolled in the outpatients clinic, 32 dyads were identified and agreed to participate to the experimental protocol and were preliminary screened for multidimensional frailty and prefrailty with the (fr)Agile tool, whose development is described in Task #4. Preliminary results show that multidimensional prefrailty and frailty are highly prevalent in patients with HF and are increasing also among their caregivers.
STATUS - 31/03/2025
Further preliminary analysis performed on enrolled HF patients and caregivers (32 dyads) reveal that caregivers frailty score significantly increases with increasing patients (fr)Agile scores (p: 0,006 for trend) and that caregivers frailty score increased mainly in the mental domain (p: 0,014 for trend). These data suggest that monitoring dyads multidimensional frailty may be useful to capture trends of caregiver distress, especially in the mental domain.
STATUS - 30/06/2025
Awaiting (fr)Agile application delivery.
STATUS - 30/09/2025
Dyads recruitment ongoing.
STATUS - 31/12/2025
Awaiting monitoring devices final tuning.