Multidisciplinary Ventricular Assist Device Clinic: Feasibility Pilot Study and Quality of Life Impact Assessment

The current standard of care for ventricular-assist device (VAD) patients is composed of a multidisciplinary team (MDT), which is a mandated practice in the pre-implant and implant hospitalization phase of care. Each member of the MDT (surgeon, cardiologist, VAD coordinator, physical therapist, occupational therapist, social worker, and palliative care specialist) provides unique and orthogonal data. Post-implant care is currently centered around the avoidance of complications of VAD support, including cerebrovascular insult (CVA/TIA), gastrointestinal bleeding and infection. Although patients are referred to cardiac rehabilitation post VAD implant, assessment of functional capacity improvement post-implant is not well standardized. In our program, PT, OT, SW and palliative care medicine do not routinely see patients at intervals post-implant and are available in a limited fashion if specific concerns arise.

Prior studies have shown that MDT care in VAD patients improves survival in an in-patient setting and proves to be feasible and effective in other disease processes. Despite major improvements in survival for VAD patients however, quality of life and physical functioning measures have not seen significant improvements. Since there is a clinical need to examine post-implant treatment, this study aims to characterize the impact of routine MDT care on health-related quality of life, caregiver burnout and functional capacity of outpatient VAD patients, and to determine if implementation of MDT care is associated with a reduction in complications and readmissions in VAD patients at one- and two-years post implant.

This study will include two prospective interventional cohorts and a retrospective control cohort. The first prospective interventional cohort will consist of patients who recently underwent LVAD implantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, and their caregivers. These patients will receive only multidisciplinary team care from the time of their implant. The second prospective interventional cohort will consist of patients who have previously undergone LVAD implantation at Massachusetts General Hospital who are being followed-up with standard-of-care VAD clinic visits, and their caregivers. These patients will receive a hybrid of multidisciplinary team care and standard-of-care visits. The historical control cohort will consist of retrospective data collection on patients who have undergone LVAD implantation in the past and no longer have an LVAD implanted (due to transplant, death, explant, etc.). This group will be matched with the prospective interventional patients. The investigators hypothesize that the MDT clinic model in addition to standard of care VAD management will positively impact the quality of life and functional status of VAD patients. Future work will study readmission rates, medical complications, and overall survival difference between MultiVAD clinic care and usual care VAD clinics.

Subjects who consent to this study will be seen by the MDT providers and complete Cardiopulmonary Exercise Tests (CPET), six-minute-walk-tests, and quality of life questionnaires. Newly-implanted VAD subjects will participate over a 24-month period and previously-implanted VAD subjects will participate over a 12-month period. The primary caregivers of these subjects will complete a Caregiver Self-Assessment at two timepoints. We anticipate to enroll 20 newly-implanted VAD patients in the pure-MDT arm, 35 pre-existing VAD patients in hybrid-MDT/SOC arm, and 55 primary caregivers.