Telehealth for the management of blood pressure in patients with chronic kidney disease: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND

Most patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) fail to achieve blood pressure (BP) management as recommended. Meanwhile, the effects of promising intervention and telehealth on BP control in CKD patients remain unclear. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of telehealth for BP in CKD non-dialysis patients.

METHODS

Databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and CBM were systematically searched for randomised controlled trials or quasi-randomised controlled trials on telehealth for BP control of CKD3-5 non-dialysis patients. We analysed systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), serum creatinine, and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) with a fixed-effects model.

RESULTS

Three studies, with total 680 subjects, were included in our systematic review and two were included for meta-analysis. Pooled estimates showed decreased SBP (pooled mean difference (MD), -5.10; 95% confidence interval (CI), -11.34, 1.14; p > 0.05, p = 0.11), increased DBP (pooled MD, 0.45; 95% CI, -4.24, 5.13; p > 0.05, p = 0.85), decreased serum creatinine (pooled MD, -0.38; 95% CI, -0.83, 0.07; p > 0.05, p = 0.10) and maintained eGFR (pooled MD, 4.72; 95% CI, -1.85, 11.29; p > 0.05, p = 0.16) in the telehealth group. There was no significant difference from the control group. MAP (MD, 0.6; 95% CI, -6.61, 7.81; p > 0.05, p = 0.87) and BP control rate ( p > 0.05, p = 0.8), respectively, shown in two studies also demonstrated no statistical significance in the telehealth group.

CONCLUSIONS

There was no statistically significant evidence to support the superiority of telehealth for BP management in CKD patients. This suggests further studies with improved study design and optimised intervention are needed in the future.