Lung Ultrasoung Guided Treatment in Chronic Heart Failure Patients: a Randomized Controlled Trial

Introduction: Despite the great advances in treatment, heart failure (HF) continues to be an important health problem because of its high prevalence, morbidity, mortality and associated costs. Research shows at least 40% of HF in-patients are going to be readmitted in the following year. Thus, new strategies to reduce HF decompensations are needed.

In recent studies, pulmonary congestion which is expressed in the form of B-lines detected by lung ultrasound (LUS) has proven to be a potent prognostic predictor of hospitalization and mortality in HF. Moreover, the use of LUS is becoming more common due to its availability (with pocket devices with sizes approaching those of smart phones); its simplicity (rapid learning curve and rapid examination, less than 5 minutes) and its safety (radiation free).

We hypothesize that a management guided by LUS in HF patients may improve outcomes.

Objective: The aim of our study is to evaluate if ambulatory LUS guided treatment of patients after a hospitalization for HF, decreases the combined end-point of mortality or re-hospitalization after a 6 months follow-up.

Study design: The design of our study is a randomized, simple blinded, clinical trial.

Eligible patients are patients older than 18 years of age who have been hospitalized for HF. The exclusion criteria are life expectancy of less than 6 months or uninterpretable lung ultrasound. Eligible patients are going to be randomized into either the "LUS group" or the "control group".

The follow-up consists of visits to the HF clinic at periods of 15 days, 1, 3 and 6 months after the initial hospitalization. LUS is going to be performed on all patients despite their respective group. Only in relation to the "LUS group", the treating physician will have the result of the examination and the subsequent treatment adjustment could be made in response to those findings.

This study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki and the study protocol is being evaluated by the Ethic Committee of our institution.