Claudia Vittori - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Claudia Vittori

Research paper thumbnail of A case series of novel coronavirus infection in heart transplantation from 2 centers in the pandemic area in the North of Italy

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, 2020

Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on ... more Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Research paper thumbnail of Moving Towards Estimating Sons' Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the UK

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Global and Disaggregated Measures of Earnings Mobility: Evidence from Five European Countries

Bulletin of Economic Research, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Prognostic impact of late gadolinium enhancement in the risk stratification of heart transplant patients

European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Imaging, 2016

The aim of the present study was to assess the association of the presence and amount of late gad... more The aim of the present study was to assess the association of the presence and amount of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) with cardiovascular adverse events in patients with orthotopic heart transplantation (HTx). We enrolled 48 patients (mean age, 54.7 ± 14.6 years; 37 men) at various stages after HTx. All patients underwent standard CMR at 1.5 T, to characterize both cardiac anatomy and LGE. Late gadolinium enhancement was detected in 26 patients (54%). All-cause and cardiovascular mortalities, and a composite of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) recurrence were evaluated during the follow-up period for a median of 5.16 years. Ten patients (21%) died and 26 (54%) were readmitted because of MACE. Multivariate Cox analysis identified as independent predictors of MACE a diagnosis of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) (HR 3.63; 1.5-8.7 95% CI; P = 0.0039), left ventricular end systolic volume index (HR 1.04; 95% CI 1.01-1.079; P = 0.008), LGE mass (HR 1.04; 1.01-1.06 95% CI; P = 0.0007), LGE % of left ventricular mass (HR 1.083; 1.03-1.13 95% CI; P = 0.0002). Independent predictors of all-cause death were CAV (HR 6.33; 95% CI 1.33-30.03; P = 0.0201), LGE mass (HR 1.04; 1.01-1.07 95% CI; P = 0.005), LGE % of left ventricular mass (HR 1.075; 1.02-1.13 95% CI; P = 0.007). Patients with CAV had a risk of MACE by 5 years of 67% (95% CI 0.309-0.851%); the addition of 7.9 LGE % to the risk model increased the predicted risk to 88% (95% CI 0.572-0.967%). The current study demonstrated that the presence of CAV and the total amount of LGE have a significant independent association with MACE and mortality in HTx patients.

Research paper thumbnail of La Meglio Gioventù: earnings gaps across generations and skills in Italy

Economia Politica, 2016

This paper documents the evolution of the experience-earnings profiles of private employees in It... more This paper documents the evolution of the experience-earnings profiles of private employees in Italy over the first six years of working career across three birth cohorts (1965-1969, 1970-1974, 1975-1979). We explore the average trends and disentangle how the patterns vary according to individual skills, defined in terms of both educational levels and percentiles of the unconditional earnings distribution. Unlike previous studies, and in contrast with the expectations prompted by the skill-biased literature, our results surprisingly show that the Italian "best of youth", i.e. the best workers of the most recent cohorts (the high skilled), have suffered, compared to the previous cohorts, an earnings penalty much more severe than that experienced by unskilled workers. This finding also raises questions about the effectiveness of the European Employment Strategy, which repeatedly stressed the importance of human capital and technological knowledge as main drivers for European performance. JEL Classification: J24, J31 * Reference is to the Italian film "La Meglio Gioventù" (2003), entitled in the English version "The Best of Youth". The movie tells the story of an Italian family, their children and friends, from the years of youth in the '60s to university studies, working career, parenthood, and retirement in the 2000s.

Research paper thumbnail of Abstract 13611: Negative Prognostic Impact of Late Gadolinium Enhancement on Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Images in Heart Transplant Patients

Circulation, Nov 23, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Late gadolinium enhancement patterns on cardiac magnetic resonance images in heart transplant patients

Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, Jan 21, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Prognostic impact of late gadolinium enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance in the risk stratification of heart transplant patients

Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of The effect of parental background along the sons’ earnings distribution: does one pattern fit for all?

Applied Economics Letters, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Nonlinear Estimation of Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility and the Role of Education

Previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have typically focused at on estimating per... more Previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have typically focused at on estimating persistence across generations at the mean of the distribution of sons' earnings. Here, we use the relatively new unconditional quantile regression (UQR) technique to consider how the association between parental income in childhood and sons' adult earnings vary across the distribution of sons' earnings. We find a Jshaped relationship between parental income and sons' earnings, with parental income a particularly strong predictor of labour market success for those at the bottom, and to a greater extent, the top of the earnings distribution. We explore the potential role of early skills, education and early labour market attachment in this process. Worryingly, we find that education is not as meritocratic as we might hope, with the role of parental income dominating that of education at the top of the distribution of earnings. Early unemployment experience has long-lasting impacts on sorting those at the bottom, alongside parental income.

Research paper thumbnail of Exploring Shorrocks Mobility Indices Using European Data

Starting from the approach proposed by Schluter and Trede we develop a continuous and alternative... more Starting from the approach proposed by Schluter and Trede we develop a continuous and alternative measure of mobility which first, allows to identify mobility over different parts of the earnings distribution and second, to distinguish between mobility that tends to reduce or increase the level of permanent inequality. This paper focuses on four European countries, Denmark, Germany, Spain and the UK. In a global perspective, mobility in the short and long-run analysis tends to equalize the level of permanent inequality. Six year changes comparing the average between 1994 and 1995 with the average of 2000 and 2001, suggests that Denmark has the highest mobility mainly almost entirely from higher mobility at the middle and top of the distribution. Germany has the lowest overall mobility. Overall mobility over six years produces only a modest reduction in inequality patterns (5 to 10%) adopting the Gini index and there is no clear correlation between mobility and inequality levels. Exploiting the decomposability of the mobility index developed, we carry out a local analysis by earnings quintiles which draw some general key facts. It emerges that it is the bottom 20 percent of the earnings distribution that makes the largest contribution to the global mobility pattern and that mobility, with the exception of Denmark, does not lead to clear convergence to the mean but at points around 0.7-0.8 and 1.5 to 2 times the mean.

Research paper thumbnail of First report of a successful pregnancy in an everolimus treated heart transplanted patient: Neonatal disappearance of immunosuppressive drugs

Reproductive Toxicology, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of 10.1016 J.CARPATH.2015.02.001

Research paper thumbnail of Pathologic correlates of late gadolinium enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance in a heart transplant patient

Cardiovascular Pathology, 2015

We report the histopathologic correlates of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at cardiac magnetic... more We report the histopathologic correlates of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in a patient with heart transplant who died for graft failure a few months after the scan. Extensive late enhancement was present at CMR, and it correlated with extensive fibrosis at histology. To our knowledge, this is the first time the findings on contrast enhancement CMR are compared to the histology of the whole heart in a heart transplantation patient, and the correspondence between LGE and fibrosis, demonstrated in other cardiac pathologies, is confirmed also in this particular setting.

Research paper thumbnail of 790 Echocardiography standard and tissue Doppler imaging: guide to electrical treatment of severe heart failure

European Journal of Heart Failure Supplements, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Moving towards estimating lifetime intergenerational economic mobility in the UK

Estimates of intergenerational economic mobility that use point in time measures of income and ea... more Estimates of intergenerational economic mobility that use point in time measures of income and earnings suffer from lifecycle and attenuation bias. We consider these issues for the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and British Cohort Study (BCS) for the first time, highlighting how common methods used to deal with these biases do not eradicate these issues. To attempt to overcome this, we offer the first estimates of lifetime intergenerational economic mobility for the UK. In doing so, we discuss a third potential bias, regularly ignored in the literature, driven by spells out of work. When all three biases are considered, our best estimate of lifetime intergenerational economic persistence in the UK is 0.43, significantly higher than previously thought. We discuss why there is good reason to believe that this is still a lower bound.

Research paper thumbnail of Individual Earnings Mobility and the Persistence of Earnings Inequalities in Australia

Economic Record, 2014

ABSTRACT This paper assesses earnings mobility among workers in Australia between 2001/2 and 2008... more ABSTRACT This paper assesses earnings mobility among workers in Australia between 2001/2 and 2008/9 using HILDA household panel data. We examine the pattern of individuals' earnings growth and explore the importance of mobility as an equaliser of longer-term earnings. We find that progressive earnings growth decreased overall inequality even after considering the re-ranking that occurred in the distribution. This was partly driven by growth of earnings with age and partly by step changes associated with job-to-job moves, promotions and taking on more responsibility. Shocks also acted against this equalising process, most notably job loss, which had substantial negative effects on earnings and disproportionately fell on lower-waged workers.

Research paper thumbnail of Heart transplantation

Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Earnings Mobility and Inequality: An Integrated Framework

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

ABSTRACT In this paper we propose an integrated framework for the analysis of earnings inequality... more ABSTRACT In this paper we propose an integrated framework for the analysis of earnings inequality and mobility, which enables the analysis of the distributional dimension of inequality reduction from mobility, an assessment of the economic drivers of mobility and a sense of which drivers are equalising and dis-equalising. In particular we are able to capture the extent to which life-cycle characteristics, key life events, job related characteristics, and changes in working time affect overall mobility and inequality. The framework also offers a bounded approach to isolating the underlying inequality reduction resulting from mobility from measurement error which can otherwise lead to a substantial upward bias. Using data from the Australian HILDA survey we find evidence of a sizable degree of earnings mobility in Australia over the years 2001/2 to 2008/9. The raw inequality reduction resulting from economic mobility was 0.148 Gini points from an initial estimate of 0.368, however, the bounded range based on two alternative versions of two stage estimation lies between 0.072 and 0.102 or between ¼ and 1/3 of original inequality. We show how the inequality reduction from mobility is primarily driven in the bottom part of the initial distribution, with the upper tail being particularly prone to measurement issues. A sizeable part of the identified mobility is simply driven by age-earnings growth that sees more rapid wage increases for younger workers and wage progression among women in notably stronger in reducing inequality because they start lower in distribution. Yet this rather smooth picture of earnings rising with age is shown to be substantially driven by a series of less frequent step changes associated with job-tojob moves, promotions and taking on more responsibility. There are also shocks which run against this equalising process, most notably job loss, which has substantial negative effects on earnings and disproportionately falls on lower waged workers.

Research paper thumbnail of Home-Based Telesurveillance Program in Chronic Heart Failure: Effects on Clinical Status and Implications for 1-Year Prognosis

Telemedicine and e-Health, 2013

Studies focusing on the effects of telemanagement programs for chronic heart failure (CHF) on fun... more Studies focusing on the effects of telemanagement programs for chronic heart failure (CHF) on functional status are lacking, and the prognostic value of the clinical response to the programs is unknown. In the Lombardy region of Italy, a home-based telesurveillance program (HTP) including multidisciplinary management and remote telemonitoring for patients with CHF was introduced in 2000 and was formally adopted, as part of the services delivered by the regional healthcare system, in 2006. This article reports the effect of the HTP on the functional status and quality of life and describes the main outcomes observed within 1 year from the end of the program. Six-month variations of New York Heart Association (NYHA) class, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), 6-min walking distance (6MWD), and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) score were evaluated in 602 CHF patients. Patients showing at least two of the following conditions-NYHA class reduction, increase in LVEF ≥5%, 6MWD >30 m, and a reduction of >24 points of MLHFQ-were defined as "responders." One-year events included unplanned cardiovascular readmissions and mortality. A significant improvement in NYHA class, LVEF, 6MWD, and MLHFQ was observed. Clinical events occurred in 24.1% of non-responders and in 15.9% of responders (p=0.03). An unfavorable response to the program, the presence of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, and multiple comorbidities were predictors of poor outcome. The HTP was effective in improving CHF patient functional status, and an unsuccessful response to the intervention seems to be an independent marker of poor prognosis.

Research paper thumbnail of A case series of novel coronavirus infection in heart transplantation from 2 centers in the pandemic area in the North of Italy

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, 2020

Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on ... more Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Research paper thumbnail of Moving Towards Estimating Sons' Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the UK

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Global and Disaggregated Measures of Earnings Mobility: Evidence from Five European Countries

Bulletin of Economic Research, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Prognostic impact of late gadolinium enhancement in the risk stratification of heart transplant patients

European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Imaging, 2016

The aim of the present study was to assess the association of the presence and amount of late gad... more The aim of the present study was to assess the association of the presence and amount of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) with cardiovascular adverse events in patients with orthotopic heart transplantation (HTx). We enrolled 48 patients (mean age, 54.7 ± 14.6 years; 37 men) at various stages after HTx. All patients underwent standard CMR at 1.5 T, to characterize both cardiac anatomy and LGE. Late gadolinium enhancement was detected in 26 patients (54%). All-cause and cardiovascular mortalities, and a composite of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) recurrence were evaluated during the follow-up period for a median of 5.16 years. Ten patients (21%) died and 26 (54%) were readmitted because of MACE. Multivariate Cox analysis identified as independent predictors of MACE a diagnosis of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) (HR 3.63; 1.5-8.7 95% CI; P = 0.0039), left ventricular end systolic volume index (HR 1.04; 95% CI 1.01-1.079; P = 0.008), LGE mass (HR 1.04; 1.01-1.06 95% CI; P = 0.0007), LGE % of left ventricular mass (HR 1.083; 1.03-1.13 95% CI; P = 0.0002). Independent predictors of all-cause death were CAV (HR 6.33; 95% CI 1.33-30.03; P = 0.0201), LGE mass (HR 1.04; 1.01-1.07 95% CI; P = 0.005), LGE % of left ventricular mass (HR 1.075; 1.02-1.13 95% CI; P = 0.007). Patients with CAV had a risk of MACE by 5 years of 67% (95% CI 0.309-0.851%); the addition of 7.9 LGE % to the risk model increased the predicted risk to 88% (95% CI 0.572-0.967%). The current study demonstrated that the presence of CAV and the total amount of LGE have a significant independent association with MACE and mortality in HTx patients.

Research paper thumbnail of La Meglio Gioventù: earnings gaps across generations and skills in Italy

Economia Politica, 2016

This paper documents the evolution of the experience-earnings profiles of private employees in It... more This paper documents the evolution of the experience-earnings profiles of private employees in Italy over the first six years of working career across three birth cohorts (1965-1969, 1970-1974, 1975-1979). We explore the average trends and disentangle how the patterns vary according to individual skills, defined in terms of both educational levels and percentiles of the unconditional earnings distribution. Unlike previous studies, and in contrast with the expectations prompted by the skill-biased literature, our results surprisingly show that the Italian "best of youth", i.e. the best workers of the most recent cohorts (the high skilled), have suffered, compared to the previous cohorts, an earnings penalty much more severe than that experienced by unskilled workers. This finding also raises questions about the effectiveness of the European Employment Strategy, which repeatedly stressed the importance of human capital and technological knowledge as main drivers for European performance. JEL Classification: J24, J31 * Reference is to the Italian film "La Meglio Gioventù" (2003), entitled in the English version "The Best of Youth". The movie tells the story of an Italian family, their children and friends, from the years of youth in the '60s to university studies, working career, parenthood, and retirement in the 2000s.

Research paper thumbnail of Abstract 13611: Negative Prognostic Impact of Late Gadolinium Enhancement on Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Images in Heart Transplant Patients

Circulation, Nov 23, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Late gadolinium enhancement patterns on cardiac magnetic resonance images in heart transplant patients

Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, Jan 21, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Prognostic impact of late gadolinium enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance in the risk stratification of heart transplant patients

Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of The effect of parental background along the sons’ earnings distribution: does one pattern fit for all?

Applied Economics Letters, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Nonlinear Estimation of Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility and the Role of Education

Previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have typically focused at on estimating per... more Previous studies of intergenerational income mobility have typically focused at on estimating persistence across generations at the mean of the distribution of sons' earnings. Here, we use the relatively new unconditional quantile regression (UQR) technique to consider how the association between parental income in childhood and sons' adult earnings vary across the distribution of sons' earnings. We find a Jshaped relationship between parental income and sons' earnings, with parental income a particularly strong predictor of labour market success for those at the bottom, and to a greater extent, the top of the earnings distribution. We explore the potential role of early skills, education and early labour market attachment in this process. Worryingly, we find that education is not as meritocratic as we might hope, with the role of parental income dominating that of education at the top of the distribution of earnings. Early unemployment experience has long-lasting impacts on sorting those at the bottom, alongside parental income.

Research paper thumbnail of Exploring Shorrocks Mobility Indices Using European Data

Starting from the approach proposed by Schluter and Trede we develop a continuous and alternative... more Starting from the approach proposed by Schluter and Trede we develop a continuous and alternative measure of mobility which first, allows to identify mobility over different parts of the earnings distribution and second, to distinguish between mobility that tends to reduce or increase the level of permanent inequality. This paper focuses on four European countries, Denmark, Germany, Spain and the UK. In a global perspective, mobility in the short and long-run analysis tends to equalize the level of permanent inequality. Six year changes comparing the average between 1994 and 1995 with the average of 2000 and 2001, suggests that Denmark has the highest mobility mainly almost entirely from higher mobility at the middle and top of the distribution. Germany has the lowest overall mobility. Overall mobility over six years produces only a modest reduction in inequality patterns (5 to 10%) adopting the Gini index and there is no clear correlation between mobility and inequality levels. Exploiting the decomposability of the mobility index developed, we carry out a local analysis by earnings quintiles which draw some general key facts. It emerges that it is the bottom 20 percent of the earnings distribution that makes the largest contribution to the global mobility pattern and that mobility, with the exception of Denmark, does not lead to clear convergence to the mean but at points around 0.7-0.8 and 1.5 to 2 times the mean.

Research paper thumbnail of First report of a successful pregnancy in an everolimus treated heart transplanted patient: Neonatal disappearance of immunosuppressive drugs

Reproductive Toxicology, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of 10.1016 J.CARPATH.2015.02.001

Research paper thumbnail of Pathologic correlates of late gadolinium enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance in a heart transplant patient

Cardiovascular Pathology, 2015

We report the histopathologic correlates of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at cardiac magnetic... more We report the histopathologic correlates of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in a patient with heart transplant who died for graft failure a few months after the scan. Extensive late enhancement was present at CMR, and it correlated with extensive fibrosis at histology. To our knowledge, this is the first time the findings on contrast enhancement CMR are compared to the histology of the whole heart in a heart transplantation patient, and the correspondence between LGE and fibrosis, demonstrated in other cardiac pathologies, is confirmed also in this particular setting.

Research paper thumbnail of 790 Echocardiography standard and tissue Doppler imaging: guide to electrical treatment of severe heart failure

European Journal of Heart Failure Supplements, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Moving towards estimating lifetime intergenerational economic mobility in the UK

Estimates of intergenerational economic mobility that use point in time measures of income and ea... more Estimates of intergenerational economic mobility that use point in time measures of income and earnings suffer from lifecycle and attenuation bias. We consider these issues for the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and British Cohort Study (BCS) for the first time, highlighting how common methods used to deal with these biases do not eradicate these issues. To attempt to overcome this, we offer the first estimates of lifetime intergenerational economic mobility for the UK. In doing so, we discuss a third potential bias, regularly ignored in the literature, driven by spells out of work. When all three biases are considered, our best estimate of lifetime intergenerational economic persistence in the UK is 0.43, significantly higher than previously thought. We discuss why there is good reason to believe that this is still a lower bound.

Research paper thumbnail of Individual Earnings Mobility and the Persistence of Earnings Inequalities in Australia

Economic Record, 2014

ABSTRACT This paper assesses earnings mobility among workers in Australia between 2001/2 and 2008... more ABSTRACT This paper assesses earnings mobility among workers in Australia between 2001/2 and 2008/9 using HILDA household panel data. We examine the pattern of individuals' earnings growth and explore the importance of mobility as an equaliser of longer-term earnings. We find that progressive earnings growth decreased overall inequality even after considering the re-ranking that occurred in the distribution. This was partly driven by growth of earnings with age and partly by step changes associated with job-to-job moves, promotions and taking on more responsibility. Shocks also acted against this equalising process, most notably job loss, which had substantial negative effects on earnings and disproportionately fell on lower-waged workers.

Research paper thumbnail of Heart transplantation

Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Earnings Mobility and Inequality: An Integrated Framework

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

ABSTRACT In this paper we propose an integrated framework for the analysis of earnings inequality... more ABSTRACT In this paper we propose an integrated framework for the analysis of earnings inequality and mobility, which enables the analysis of the distributional dimension of inequality reduction from mobility, an assessment of the economic drivers of mobility and a sense of which drivers are equalising and dis-equalising. In particular we are able to capture the extent to which life-cycle characteristics, key life events, job related characteristics, and changes in working time affect overall mobility and inequality. The framework also offers a bounded approach to isolating the underlying inequality reduction resulting from mobility from measurement error which can otherwise lead to a substantial upward bias. Using data from the Australian HILDA survey we find evidence of a sizable degree of earnings mobility in Australia over the years 2001/2 to 2008/9. The raw inequality reduction resulting from economic mobility was 0.148 Gini points from an initial estimate of 0.368, however, the bounded range based on two alternative versions of two stage estimation lies between 0.072 and 0.102 or between ¼ and 1/3 of original inequality. We show how the inequality reduction from mobility is primarily driven in the bottom part of the initial distribution, with the upper tail being particularly prone to measurement issues. A sizeable part of the identified mobility is simply driven by age-earnings growth that sees more rapid wage increases for younger workers and wage progression among women in notably stronger in reducing inequality because they start lower in distribution. Yet this rather smooth picture of earnings rising with age is shown to be substantially driven by a series of less frequent step changes associated with job-tojob moves, promotions and taking on more responsibility. There are also shocks which run against this equalising process, most notably job loss, which has substantial negative effects on earnings and disproportionately falls on lower waged workers.

Research paper thumbnail of Home-Based Telesurveillance Program in Chronic Heart Failure: Effects on Clinical Status and Implications for 1-Year Prognosis

Telemedicine and e-Health, 2013

Studies focusing on the effects of telemanagement programs for chronic heart failure (CHF) on fun... more Studies focusing on the effects of telemanagement programs for chronic heart failure (CHF) on functional status are lacking, and the prognostic value of the clinical response to the programs is unknown. In the Lombardy region of Italy, a home-based telesurveillance program (HTP) including multidisciplinary management and remote telemonitoring for patients with CHF was introduced in 2000 and was formally adopted, as part of the services delivered by the regional healthcare system, in 2006. This article reports the effect of the HTP on the functional status and quality of life and describes the main outcomes observed within 1 year from the end of the program. Six-month variations of New York Heart Association (NYHA) class, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), 6-min walking distance (6MWD), and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) score were evaluated in 602 CHF patients. Patients showing at least two of the following conditions-NYHA class reduction, increase in LVEF ≥5%, 6MWD >30 m, and a reduction of >24 points of MLHFQ-were defined as "responders." One-year events included unplanned cardiovascular readmissions and mortality. A significant improvement in NYHA class, LVEF, 6MWD, and MLHFQ was observed. Clinical events occurred in 24.1% of non-responders and in 15.9% of responders (p=0.03). An unfavorable response to the program, the presence of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, and multiple comorbidities were predictors of poor outcome. The HTP was effective in improving CHF patient functional status, and an unsuccessful response to the intervention seems to be an independent marker of poor prognosis.