Critical review of non-invasive respiratory monitoring in medical care

Abstract

Respiratory failure can be difficult to predict. It can develop into a life-threatening condition in just a few minutes, or it can build up more slowly. Thus continuous monitoring of respiratory activity should be mandatory in clinical, high-risk situations, and appropriate monitoring equipment could be life-saving. The review considers non-invasive methods and devices claimed to provide information about respiratory rate or depth, or gas exchange. Methods are categorised into those responding to movement, volume and tissue composition detection; air flow; and blood gas concentration. The merits and limitations of the methods and devices are analysed, considering information content and their ability to minimise the rate of false alarms and false non-alarms. It is concluded that the field of non-invasive respiratory monitoring is still in an exploratory phase, with numerous reports on specific device solutions but less work on evaluation and adaptation to clinical requirements. Convincing evidence of the clinical usefulness of respiratory monitors is still lacking. Devices responding only to respiratory rate, and lacking information about actual gas exchange, will have limited clinical value. Furthermore, enhancement in specificity and sensitivity to avoid false alarms and non-alarms will be necessary to meet clinical requirements. Miniature CO2 sensors are identified as one route towards substantial improvement.

Análise Da Forma De Onda Respiratória Por Meio De Múltplos Acelerômetros Usando Empirical Mode Decomposition

“…Esse é um método adaptativo, sendo recomendado para fazer análise de dados não lineares e não estacionários [2]. Uma etapa do método, o Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), processa um sinal e o decompõe em finitas componentes, intituladas Instrinsic Mode Functions (IMF's).…”

“…Para obter essa forma de onda, são geralmente usadas as máscaras respiratórias ou as cânulas nasais. Esses métodos de monitoramento são incômodos para os usuários pois obstruem parcialmente a respiração e não são tolerados por pacientes debilitados [2]. Também são limitados aos ambientes hospitalares, pois requerem um profissional para acompanhar o paciente durante a medição [3].…”

Long-period grating fiber-optic sensors of bending for applications in pulmonology

“…Standardni metodi merenja zasnivaju se na merenju protoka vazduha kroz oronazalnu masku. Greške ovih metoda javljaju se usled curenja vazduha kroz sigurnosne otvore na masci ili lošeg postavljanja maske i nisu zanemarljive [16]. Stoga su uloženi napori da se pronañu alternativni načini merenja disajnih zapremina.…”

An Evaluation of Thermal Imaging Based Respiration Rate Monitoring in Children

“…Therefore, the development of noncontact respiration monitoring methods has been considered in a number of studies. A critical review of noncontact respiration monitoring in medical care is provided in (Folke et al, 2003). Ultrasound, radar, microwave, video image processing, optical image processing and thermal image processing were approaches reported to achieve noncontact respiration monitoring.…”