DOI: 10.1177/15305627261476425 ISSN: 1530-5627

Telehealth Monitoring to Determine the Effect of Ramadan Fasting on Blood Pressure in Congestive Heart Failure Patients

Malcolm Clarke, Hulya Gokalp, Omer Gedikli
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Objective:

A prospective study to compare the mean blood pressure and mean weight of subjects with congestive heart failure (CHF) in the month before Ramadan, during the month of Ramadan, and in each of the two months following Ramadan to determine if fasting has any effect on health.

Methods:

Patients were given a blood pressure meter and weighing scale and instructed to take daily measurements. Data were transmitted wirelessly from the devices to a simple home gateway for automatic onward transmission to the data server without intervention from the subject. Subsets of data for blood pressure and weight were created for each of the months before Ramadan, during the month of Ramadan, and the two months following Ramadan for 2025 and 2026. The mean and standard deviation were determined for each patient, and comparison between successive months was performed for the cohort mean and standard deviation using t- test. Paired t -tests were performed for subgroups containing only patients participating in successive periods.

Results:

There was significant variation in the mean of an individual and in the mean of a cohort; however, the mean was consistent across the period with the value for the t- test between successive periods being greater than 0.25 (CI: 0.05). The value for the paired t- test was greater than 0.22 (CI: 0.05) for all periods except between post-Ramadan and 2 months post-Ramadan when the value was 0.10 (CI: 0.05), and some subjects were seen to exhibit significant changes.

Conclusions:

The t- test and paired t- test values show that there were no statistically significant differences between cohort means and paired comparisons for blood pressure and weight for all months, indicating there are no effects on health in patients with CHF due to fasting if appropriately clinically managed.

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