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Circulation on the Run


Apr 30, 2018

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center of Singapore and Duke National University of Singapore. Our featured discussion today is a wake-up call because despite substantial efforts to promote cardiac rehabilitation in guidelines and performance measures only a small percentage of patients are receiving this and there is a remarkable regional variation. Lots of lessons to be learned here coming right up after these summaries.

                                                More children with congenital heart disease are surviving into adulthood, and congenital heart disease is associated with risk factors for dementia. But what is the actual risk of dementia in congenital heart disease adults? Well, in this first paper from first and corresponding author Dr. Bagge from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, the authors used medical registries and a medical record review of all Danish hospitals to identify more than 10,600 adults with congenital heart disease diagnosed between 1963 and 2012 and followed up until the hospital diagnosis of dementia or death, emigration, or the end of the study in the end of December 2012.

                                                For each individual with congenital heart disease the authors identified 10 members of the Danish general population matched on sex and birth year. They found that the risk of all-cause dementia was increased by about 60% in congenital heart disease adults compared with the matched general population. The risk was higher for early onset dementia, that is dementia at less than 65 years of age, in which the risk was more than double. The risk was also elevated for all levels of congenital heart disease complexity, including those with cyanotic potential. The relative risk remained increased for those without extra cardiac defect or acquired cardiovascular diseases.

                                                These results really underscore the importance of understanding the risk of adverse long-term neurologic outcomes in the growing and aging population with congenital heart diseases.

                                                The next paper suggests that patient outcomes after lower limb revascularization have improved in England over recent times. This paper from first and corresponding author Dr. Heikkila from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used individual patient records from hospital episode statistics to identify almost 104,000 patients who underwent endovascular or surgical lower limb revascularization for infrainguinal peripheral artery disease in England between 2006 and 2015. During this 10-year period the estimated one-year risks of major amputation and death reduced after both endovascular and surgical lower limb revascularization in England. These trends were observed for all categories of peripheral artery disease severity, with the largest reductions seen among patients with the most severe underlying disease.

                                                These encouraging trends coincided with a period of centralization and specialization of vascular services in England, although the current findings cannot be interpreted as resulting directly from this reconfiguration of services.

                                                The next paper presents experimental data showing that targeting the Janus kinase and signal transducer and activator of transcription or JAK-STAT pathway may represent a disease-modifying strategy in inflammatory vasculopathy. First author Dr. Zhang, corresponding author Dr. Weyand from Stanford University School of Medicine examined whether persistent vessel wall inflammation in giant-cell arthritis is maintained by lesional T cells and whether such T cells are sensitive to the cytokine signaling inhibitor tofacitinib, which is a JAK inhibitor that targets JAK3 and JAK1.

                                                To do this, vascular inflammation was induced in human arteries and grafted into immunodeficient mice that were reconstituted with T cells and monocytes from patients with giant-cell arthritis. Mice carrying inflamed human arteries were then treated with tofacitinib or vehicle. They found that tofacitinib suppressed T cell invasion into the artery, inhibited proliferation and cytokine production of vasculitogenic T cells and curbed survival of artery resident T cells. Tofacitinib treatment prevented neoangiogenesis and intimal hyperplasia in these inflamed arteries. Thus, inhibition of JAK-STAT signaling with tofacitinib effectively targeted multiple disease-relevant processes in inflammatory vasculopathy and thus represents a potential disease-modifying agent.

                                                The next paper provides important insights into how coronary artery calcification burden and cardiorespiratory fitness, which are actually two independent predictors of cardiovascular disease but may interact with each other to impact cardiovascular risk. First author Dr. Radford, corresponding author Dr. Levine from the Institute of Exercise and Environmental Medicine Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and UT Southwestern Medical Center studied 8,425 men without clinical cardiovascular disease who underwent preventive medical examinations that included an objective measurement of coronary artery calcification and cardiorespiratory fitness between 1998 and 2007.

                                                They found that cardiovascular disease events increased with increasing coronary artery calcification and decreased with increasing cardiorespiratory fitness. Adjusting for coronary artery calcification levels for each additional MET of fitness there was an 11% lower risk of cardiovascular disease events. When both coronary artery calcification and cardiorespiratory fitness were considered together there was a strong association between continuous cardiorespiratory fitness and cardiovascular disease incident rates in all coronary artery calcium groups. Thus, the take-home message is for any baseline age and level of coronary artery calcification greater fitness is associated in a continuous fashion with lower risks of cardiovascular disease events.

                                                And that wraps up our summaries. Now for our feature discussion.

                                                We all know how cardiac rehabilitation is. It's strongly advocated in guidelines, it's very well highlighted in performance measures. But how well are we actually doing? Well, today's feature paper really gives us some very valuable information and really kind of holds a mirror in our face, doesn't it? I'm so pleased to have with us the first and corresponding author of the paper Dr. Alexis Beatty from VA Puget Sound Health Care System and University of Washington as well as Jarett Berry, our associate editor from UT Southwestern. Alexis, could you tell us what did you see when you looked at cardiac rehabilitation among the Medicare and VA populations?

Dr Alexis Beatty:               Overall participation in cardiac rehab after an MI or a PCI or a bypass surgery is pretty low, only about 16% of people in Medicare and about 10% of people on the VA actually participate in cardiac rehab. But the interesting thing is that we saw pretty wide variations from state to state in participation. So some states had pretty high participation, upwards of 40% of patients, and some states had only 1, 2, 3% of people participating.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Were there any patterns to this, any factors that you teased apart?

Dr Alexis Beatty:               We did observe that some regions of the country appeared to be doing better than others. So for instance, the West North Central region of the United States, Nebraska, South Dakota area has high participation in both populations and other regions like the Pacific, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, have lower participation in both populations.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                And any postulations on why this may be the case?

Dr Alexis Beatty:               Yeah, I have some theories. We did try to look at whether it was due to patient characteristics, hospital characteristics, socioeconomic status, and it doesn't really seem to be any of those things that are driving the differences, which leads me to believe that it's actual practice variations. So I think that literally the systems are set up better in some areas of the country than others to get patients into cardiac rehab.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                And as you beautifully wrote in your paper, that means that there may be an opportunity here to identify best practices here, isn't it? Jarett, you've been thinking about this a lot. What do you think?

Dr Jarett Berry:                 Yeah, I was curious, Alexis, it is interesting that the hospital variation that you saw, the on-site cardiac rehab was fairly consistent across cardiac rehab participation rates in Medicare but there was quite a bit of variability in the access to an on-site cardiac rehab site in the VA patients. I thought that was an interesting observation because it does suggest perhaps that what's driving regional variability looks to be fairly complex as you point out in your paper. But I just wanted to have you speculate a little bit or think a little bit about strategies for how we might think about improving cardiac rehab participation given the fact that there doesn't seem to be one particular answer to this problem. And so as you think about this longstanding challenge, how would you think about the future, about how we could actually really move the needle in increasing cardiac rehab participation?

Dr Alexis Beatty:               There's a lot of different ways that I think that we can work to start moving the needle. And as you point out, not every VA location has a cardiac rehab center on-site and sites that do have cardiac rehab on-site do tend to do better at getting their patients into cardiac rehab. And I think it may just be that there are people there who are interested in cardiac rehab and are promoting it to patients. And then there probably are some access issues as well. But I think it's not just kind of an "if you build it they will come" sort of proposition. Having cardiac rehab centers is important but then having systems in place to get people into cardiac rehab and get people going to cardiac rehab are just as important.

                                                And so I've talked to a lot of the VAs that have centers, don't have centers, do a good job of getting people in, don't do a good job of getting people in. And even in these places that don't have cardiac rehab on-site, if they have a system in place that helps get patients into cardiac rehab they're still able to achieve pretty high rates. And so a lot of that is just doing kind of setting it up as an automatic order and having a nurse or exercise physiologist or somebody be a navigator for the patients through the process.

                                                And then the other thing I really want to stress is the importance of providers recommending it to patients. I think that's the strength with which the providers sell cardiac rehab can really make a big difference.

Dr Jarett Berry:                 It's interesting, I just took over cardiac rehab as a medical director here at Southwestern about a year and a half ago and I've been struggling with this. And one of the interesting things that I just would love to get your thoughts on that I noted, which doesn't seem to get a lot of attention in the literature to me, is the role of co-payments. I don't know if most physicians who aren't involved in this space appreciate that for most insurance and for Medicare, it may not be the case for VA, I can't speak to that, but the co-payment amount for each time you come, for each visit is between $30 and $50 per visit. That seems to me in some ways ... I know you didn't address it at all in your paper, but just keeping this conversational ... What do you think the role of some of these other less discussed factors are such as just co-payment amounts that might actually be having a bigger effect on participation? Because I know if I had to pay a 1,000 bucks to go to cardiac rehab I might think twice about it.

Dr Alexis Beatty:               Yeah, and I think the co-payment issue is a very real issue too and there's a lot of policy level things that makes cardiac rehab difficult. So one is this co-pay issue, there also then other changes to the way it's administered like where the location of the cardiac rehab can be and how hospitals get reimbursed for that. It has to be prescribed by a physician, it can't be prescribed by a nurse practitioner or a PA, it has to be supervised by a physician. There's a lot of restrictions on cardiac rehab that can just, practically speaking, make it difficult to deliver both from the patient and the provider and health system level.

                                                And what I tell my patients when I am trying to get them to go to cardiac rehab, and we do have co-payers in the VA too that are kind of on a sliding scale depending on patients’ means. And so I tell them that it's an investment. You are making this upfront investment of your time and money and effort to get yourself healthy and learn how to be healthy in the long term. So we know that people who attend cardiac rehab are less likely to be hospitalized and are less likely to die from their heart disease, and so it's an important investment to make and that's sometimes the hard message to sell and I wish it were easier to sell.

Dr Jarett Berry:                 I totally agree with you. My own patients and also the patients that I helped manage through cardiac rehab have received such benefit in many different areas from the participation. But yeah, it is an investment.

                                                I wanted to ask another question, if I may Carolyn, about the future. And you alluded to this in your paper, I know your work with Mary Whooley, you guys have done great work thinking about rolling out home-based cardiac rehab. And I think personally that the future of cardiac rehab for most patients, that we're really going to move the needle—I mean some of the policy issues are really important—but can you comment on just telling us what home-based cardiac rehab is and to what extent you think that is a potential solution to deal with these persistently low participation rates?

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Actually Jarett, if I may just butt in before Alexis answers, I was about to ask that because I was just placing myself in the patient's point of view. And I mean even me, I hate going to gyms now and much rather work with a home app instructing me what to do and I can just do it here, you know what I mean? So I think that's a great question. Alexis?

Dr Alexis Beatty:               I agree, the future is home cardiac rehab and using all the tools that we have at our disposal to make it easy to deliver home cardiac rehab. The evidence isn't quite as strong for home cardiac rehab but the existing evidence does suggest that it's equally effective to center-based cardiac rehab, it's just not reimbursed in the United States. So functionally it only exists in sort of integrated health systems like the VA.

                                                The VA, for instance, has started delivering home-based cardiac rehab programs. I think it's now at over 30 centers in the US. And this has basically started in the last five years. And the programs are pretty similar to a center-based cardiac rehab program in that patients come in and they get an in-depth assessment from cardiac rehab professionals. But then the difference is that they go and exercise on their own at home and they check in with the cardiac rehab professionals usually on a weekly basis over the telephone. And so it ends up being more of like a coaching relationship between the cardiac rehab professionals and the patients who are exercising on their own at home. And a lot of patients really like it because, as you pointed out, it's much more convenient for them, they don't like going to a gym, they'd rather be walking around in their neighborhood or going to their local community pool to swim. So it just sort of addressed a lot of these patient issues and they don't have to pay a co-payment. So it can take some of these other barriers that are there.

Dr Jarett Berry:                 Like a Peloton bike for cardiac rehab, right?

Dr Alexis Beatty:               Yeah. I mean you could even do that. For instance, in HF-ACTION they actually gave people exercise equipment for a HF-ACTION study for the home segment of the HF-ACTION study. So there certainly are models whereby we could just be giving exercise equipment. And in the VA I can mail people these little exercise paddlers that they can put on their floor or their table and you can use them with your legs or your arms. So certainly being able to send some of this exercise equipment to your patients may help them get them into doing things. But I think home cardiac rehab is the future.

                                                And then also I do work on using technology to help deliver home cardiac rehab and I view technology for this space not as the solution but as a tool to help you deliver home cardiac rehab. And now that technology is so ubiquitous, I think that we need to now learn how to use the technology to help us better deliver cardiac rehab in a way that meets the patients' needs.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Wow. Jarett, I've actually got a question for you. You were just saying that you run the rehab unit there, so what messages did you take home from this paper?

Dr Jarett Berry:                 What I took home from this was exactly what we've been discussing, this issue of low uptake of cardiac rehab even in the scenario where you have a model where you're delivering this through Medicare or the VA we still see very low participation, albeit there is some variability. And so my interpretation after doing cardiac rehab here at Southwestern for the last year and half is exactly what Alexis is saying, is that we need to be really thinking more creatively about how we can deliver cardiac rehab where the patients are and not requiring them to participate in centers of cardiac rehab that are maybe 30, 40 miles from their home and in the middle of the workday, all of which just really makes such a model inefficient.

                                                So I just think what this paper does really solidify is that we really need to be thinking broadly and creatively about how to bring cardiac rehab to more patients because the way we're doing this now I think unfortunately is just ineffective.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Anything to add, Alexis? This is great.

Dr Alexis Beatty:               So one other point that I would like to mention. I think about 10 years ago there was another paper that used a very similar method, and we based a lot of our methods off of that paper by Suaya about 10 years ago. And they found that the rate of participation in cardiac rehab was somewhere very close to ours, I think it was 18% and we observed 16%. And since that paper was published cardiac rehab got included in guidelines, included as a performance measure, and there has been a big push and a lot of attention to try to get people into cardiac rehab and we have moved the needle zero since that time. So I think clearly something new is needed to move the needle for cardiac rehab just as Jarett was pointing out. So we got to do something because what we're doing isn't working.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                That's a great call and thank you for showing that to us so clearly in your paper.

Dr Jarett Berry:                 Yeah, thanks Alexis and thanks for being so responsive in the revision process, it was a real pleasure to work with you all on this really important paper.

Dr Alexis Beatty:               Thank you so much for publishing this paper. I feel I've been working on this for like five years.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Well you heard it here, listeners. Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to tune in again next week.