Remote Heart Monitoring Can Help Improve Rural Heart Failure Care

• After surviving a coronary heart assault, Angie Lindsey developed coronary heart failure that required her to journey hours from her rural Missouri residence for specialised care.
• An implanted distant heart-monitoring system now permits her care staff to trace adjustments in her coronary heart well being and alter remedy with out frequent hospital visits.
• Lindsey says the know-how has helped her keep away from hospitalizations, regain her independence, and return to the actions she loves.

In 2019, at 59 years outdated, Angie Lindsey was preparing for a household occasion when she felt exhausted and ailing.

“I felt dragged all day,” she stated.

Her daughter, who’s a nurse, stopped by and took her important indicators.

“I informed her what was happening, and she or he stated, ‘Nicely, Mother, I feel we have to get you someplace. I don’t know, your coronary heart sounds okay, however one thing’s not proper,’” recalled Lindsey.

They went on to the emergency room, the place medical doctors first suspected a pulmonary embolism. Nonetheless, bloodwork revealed that Lindsey’s troponin degree, a marker of coronary heart harm that needs to be near zero, was 4,400.

Medical doctors decided she was having an enormous heart attack. As a result of she lives in a small city in Missouri, they transported her 45 miles to a hospital geared up to deal with her. Two days later, medical doctors positioned a stent.

The center assault left her with congestive heart failure and a battle with fluid retention. Her situation compelled her to retire from her job as a nursing residence administrator.

After her coronary heart assault, Lindsey continued to face different well being challenges. Close to the tip of 2022, she spent a month within the hospital as her gallbladder threatened to rupture and her organs started to endure.

In January 2026, she had extreme fluid retention that induced her to realize 29 kilos in 12 days.

“A gallon of milk weighs eight kilos, so determine three, eight gallons of milk round your neck, your chest, your coronary heart. It was not very snug,” she stated.

To handle her ongoing coronary heart points, she discovered a specialist at Mercy Hospital South close to St. Louis, which was 2 and a half hours away. The physician fitted her with a 30-day coronary heart monitor however couldn’t pinpoint what was triggering her episodes.

Sitting in her cousin’s residence after an appointment in St. Louis, she discovered herself sinking into a tough query.

“I keep in mind sitting there…getting actually unhappy, pondering, ‘Is that this how my life goes to be? I’m simply going to exist,’” she stated.

In April 2026, Lindsey obtained Abbott’s implanted, paperclip-sized pulmonary artery (PA) strain sensor referred to as CardioMEMS HERO Device.

The sensor is implanted close to the guts, the place rising PA pressures sign worsening coronary heart failure, and works remotely, taking Lindsey’s PA strain readings and sending the information to her care staff. The readings notify her medical doctors of any regarding findings, permitting her to be monitored with out having to drive hours for care.

The process was fast and outpatient, requiring her to be within the hospital for only some hours.

“It was defined to me that it might be minimally invasive,” Lindsey stated. “It’s not going to repair my coronary heart, nevertheless it’s going to assist them handle it significantly better.”

Charles Carey, MD, heart specialist and medical director of the guts failure program at Mercy South in St. Louis, stated the system works when the affected person lies on a pad or pillow within the morning. This triggers a radio-frequency sign to the lung artery sensor, which then determines the pulmonary artery pressures.

“There isn’t any battery required within the sensor, and it may well final the lifetime of the affected person,” he informed Healthline. “As soon as a affected person undergoes a studying, the result’s despatched routinely to our workplace.”

Simply days after going residence, Lindsey’s care staff referred to as with a studying that was operating excessive and walked her by an adjusted remedy plan over the cellphone.

“We attempt to maximize guideline-directed medical remedy, however the most typical remedy is rising diuretics, which assist take away additional sodium and cut back the left atrial filling pressures,” stated Carey. “Our purpose is to have them keep away from going to the emergency room or the hospital by adjusting medicines to stop coronary heart failure signs.”

Whereas he believes the know-how is helpful in city areas, he stated it’s much more advantageous in rural areas the place it’s more durable to see a physician or nurse practitioner near residence.

“I feel coronary heart failure, which you must reside with every single day, has much more advantages since this know-how permits us to evaluate simply whereas the affected person is at residence, and might be achieved each day,” Carey stated. “This information improves affected person care and dietary supplements our care and information. It offers us helpful information that we can not get hold of simply by historical past or bodily examination alone.”

By Lindsey’s subsequent digital go to, her numbers had been again to regular.

“I do know the system works…and it offers me confidence that I do know they’ll handle it, so I don’t find yourself within the hospital,” she stated.

Lindsey’s newfound confidence has modified the form of her days.

“I don’t really feel like I’ve to sit down in my residence and never do something. I really feel like I can get out, and I can go. I can reside a traditional life as greatest I can. However I additionally know they’re monitoring what’s happening, so if I’ve actual issues, they’re gonna know,” she stated.

Each morning, earlier than she will get away from bed, she takes a studying with the system that takes lower than 5 minutes.

“I even timed it; 4 minutes and 43 seconds, from the time I turned it on till the studying was despatched,” Lindsey stated.

With that each day reassurance, she is again to doing the issues she’d quietly given up. She took a visit to the ocean, which she stated is her “joyful place,” and traveled alone for the primary time in years for a cousins’ reunion over the Fourth of July, taking in fireworks and an outside opera in St. Louis.

“I obtained to get out and get within the pool and simply have time and never fear about, is my coronary heart okay? Am I doing okay?”

Extra journeys are on the calendar, together with one she will be able to hardly consider: a flight to Arlington, Texas, together with her daughter to see the boy band BTS, adopted by a visit to San Francisco, for an Abbott city corridor, the place she’s going to take part as an Abbott ambassador.

“I haven’t flown in over 50 years,” Lindsey stated.

When Lindsey retired as a result of her coronary heart well being, she leaned on watercolor portray, one thing she hadn’t touched since junior excessive. Her first try at portray birds didn’t go the way in which she’d hoped.

“They only appeared like blobs on the web page,” she stated. “I stated, ‘Lord, do you assume you would do one thing with my arms and my eyes and assist me paint one thing higher?’”

To her shock, hours later, she completed her first piece, a set of bluebirds, that she nonetheless retains shut by. Since then, her work of birds, nature, and folks’s private pets have discovered their means into an area artwork competition, a one-woman present, and houses throughout the nation.

“It has given me an outlet and stored me hopeful and stored me feeling helpful,” Lindsey stated. “Having well being points as you become old will not be straightforward, and typically it offers you much less cause to rise up within the morning and fewer cause to maintain your self.”

She stated the Abbott system has given her the chance to reside life by work, the journeys, and the mornings by the ocean, and she or he hopes others going by comparable well being points really feel impressed.

“[God] has given me a means to assist others and allow them to see hope,” she stated.