Home management of oral anticoagulation via telemedicine versus conventional hospital-based treatment.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

We have developed an expert computer system for the control of oral anticoagulation therapy, accessible by the patients via their own computer. To investigate if the weekly measurement and dosing of international normalized ratio (INR) at home using the online Internet-based system was superior to conventional treatment, we performed a randomized, controlled trial.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

All 669 patients in our anticoagulation clinic were asked to participate in the trial, providing that they had Internet access and could use the CoaguChek XS system. A total of 140 patients were included and randomized to (A) once weekly measurement and report online, (B) twice weekly measurement and report online, and (C) continued conventional treatment with INR measurement in the lab every 4 weeks and dose adjustment by letter.

RESULTS

Group A had 79.7% (95% CI 79.0-80.3) of time in therapeutic range (TTR), group B 80.2% (95% CI 79.4-80.9) of TTR, and group C 72.7% (95% CI 71.9-73.4) TTR. Groups A and B perform statistically significantly better than the conventional group C, with a difference of TTR of 7% points (p < 2.2 × 10(-16)), whereas no difference was seen between A and B.

CONCLUSION

Home measurement of INR and the reporting and dosing of results online once a week increase TTR from 72% to 79% as compared to conventional computer-assisted monitoring in an anticoagulation clinic.