Mobile health interventions may help transplant recipients follow their complex medical regimens. Pocket Personal Assistant for Tracking Health (Pocket PATH) is one such intervention tailored for lung transplant recipients. A randomized controlled trial showed Pocket PATH's superiority to usual care for promoting the self-management behaviors of adherence, self-monitoring and communication with clinicians during posttransplant year 1. Its long-term impact was unknown. In this study, we examined associations between Pocket PATH exposure during year 1 and longer term clinical outcomes-mortality and bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS)-among 182 recipients who survived the original trial. Cox regression assessed whether (a) original group assignment and (b) performance of self-management behaviors during year 1 predicted time to outcomes. Median follow-up was 5.7 years after transplant (range 4.2-7.2 years). Pocket PATH exposure had no direct effect on outcomes (p-values >0.05). Self-monitoring was associated with reduced mortality risk (hazard ratio [HR] 0.45; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.22-0.91; p = 0.027), and reporting abnormal health indicators to clinicians was associated with reduced risks of mortality (HR 0.15; 95% CI 0.04-0.65; p = 0.011) and BOS (HR 0.27; 95% CI 0.08-0.86; p = 0.026), regardless of intervention group assignment. Although Pocket PATH did not have a direct impact on long-term outcomes, early improvements in self-management facilitated by Pocket PATH may be associated with long-term clinical benefit.
Keywords: allied health/nursing; bronchiolitis obliterans (BOS); clinical research/practice; compliance/adherence; lung transplantation/pulmonology; patient survival; social sciences.
© Copyright 2016 The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.