The Effects of Pre-Operative Activity Tracker Use on Recovery Time in Heart Failure Patients Who Underwent a Heart Transplant

Written by Frederick R. Macapagal, Anne Stiles, Holly Rodriguez, Rosario O. Macapagal, & Agata Stawarz-Gugala

doi: https://doi.org/10.13178/jnparr

Abstract

Background: Hospitalized pre-heart transplant patients who are physically active may decrease post-operative length-of-stay. However, these patients seldom ambulate before surgery because of weakness, fatigue, and breathlessness. A previous qualitative study revealed the use of an activity tracker encouraged ambulation in pre–heart transplant patients.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare postoperative recovery time between heart transplant patients who wore an activity tracker preoperatively and patients who did not. Recovery time was measured by extubation time, length of cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) stay, length of hospital stay, and time until sitting on the side of the bed, standing, sitting in a chair, and ambulating 10 or more steps.

Methods: This study utilized a mixed methods design. The qualitative portion was reported previously (Macapagal et al., 2021). This article reports on the quantitative portion. A retrospective quasi-experimental design using medical record review was used to compare the post-transplant outcomes of patients who did and did not wear an activity tracker preoperatively. Forty-five medical records were consecutively selected for each patient group.

Results: The final sample size was 84 patients. Three of seven recovery outcomes were significantly different between patients who did and did not wear an activity tracker: (a) time until sitting on side of bed (p = .040), (b) time until standing (p = .019), and (c) length of stay in the CVICU (p = .008).

Conclusion: Wearing an activity tracker pre-operatively may be associated with reduced post-transplant recovery time. Further research is needed using larger samples.

Keywords: activity tracker, post-op recovery time, length of stay. pre-heart transplant