Merlin net

Between January 2010 and December 2012, patients with a CIED were recommended to undergo remote monitoring at the discretion of the attending cardiologists. Since January 2013, all patients who underwent CIED-related procedures were routinely recommended for the implementation of remote monitoring. In the remote monitoring systems provided by three venders (Home Monitoring™, Biotronik; Latitude Patient Management system™, Boston Scientific, and Merlin.net™, Abbott) the records were automatically transmitted to our institution once a week via home transmitters. In the system from the fourth vendor (CareLink Network™, Medtronic, Inc.), data from the patients with a pacemaker were transmitted once a month, whereas data from patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator and cardiac resynchronization therapy were transmitted once a week. The data were reviewed by experienced clinical engineers and electrophysiologists once a week. When unscheduled transmissions were obtained, the data were quickly reviewed. Inquiry for patients was performed by physicians when the scheduled transmission was missed for a week.

The study cohort was derived using Abbott Laboratories’ proprietary patient device tracking system and the Merlin.net™ (Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, IL, USA) database to retrieve patient device type, patient characteristics (age and gender), ICD device session records, and PAP transmissions. The study cohort consisted of patients with a prior ICD who were then implanted with a PAP sensor (CardioMEMS™; Abbott Laboratories, Chicago IL, USA) between August 2014 and March 2016. Of these, patients with missing age, gender, implant date, or baseline PAP data and/or any absence of overlapping transmissions between their ICD and PAP sensor were excluded. PAP sensor implant was used as the index event, and patients were followed up with to either six months later or the time of the last transmission from the PAP sensor, whichever came earlier.