Digital Health Nudging to increase physical activity in pediatric patients with congenital heart disease: A randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: Digital nudging is a modern e-health approach to increase physical activity (PA) in younger age groups. As activity promotion is particularly important in adolescents with congenital heart disease (CHD) this randomized-controlled trail examines if Digital Health Nudging via daily smartphone messages increases PA, activity-related self-efficacy (ArSE) and health-related quality of life (HrQoL) in adolescents with CHD.

METHODS: From May 2021 to April 2022, 97 patients (15.1 ± 2.0 years, 50% girls) with moderate or severe CHD were randomly allocated 1:1 to intervention (IG) or control group (CG). Daily PA was objectively assessed in minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) by the wearable "Garmin Vivofit jr. 2®" over the entire study period. The IG received daily smartphone messages based on Bandura's social cognitive theory on the subject of PA over a period of 12-weeks.

RESULTS: According to the linear mixed model, the change of MVPA over the study period did not significantly differ between IG and CG when taking baseline MVPA into account (b=0.136, 95%-CI [-0.355; 0.627], p=0.587). Activity level was comparably high and showed only minor variability in both groups with 73.7 [62.3; 78.8] min/day in IG and 78.4 [66.6; 93.9] min/day in CG throughout the whole 12-weeks. Emotional well-being significantly increased over the study period in the IG (IG: Δ1.60 [-0.2; 6.3] vs. CG: Δ0.0 [-12.5; 6.3], p=0.043), but not total HrQoL (p=0.518) and ArSE (p=0.305).

CONCLUSION: 12-weeks of Digital Health Nudging did not increase PA, but improved feelings of emotional well-being in adolescents with CHD.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical Trials Identifier NCT04933786.