Trend of FEV1 in Cystic Fibrosis patients: A telehomecare experience

Since 2001, in the Cystic Fibrosis Center of the Pediatric Hospital Bambino Gesù in Rome, we use telemedicine for monitoring of our patients. While in our first published works reporting this experience, we showed statistically significant reduction in hospital admissions and a tendency over time towards a better stability of the respiratory function for telehomecare (THC) patients, here we focus on the trend of the Forced Expiratory Volume in the first second (FEV1). In particular, we investigate the evolution of the clinical trend of the FEV1 index, by monitoring the activities of home patients from 2011 to 2014. THC is applied in addition to the standard therapeutic protocol by following 16 Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients with specialized doctors. Our results show that THC patients improve their FEV1 values with a trend which can be considered significantly better than the one reported by the control group.