Evaluation of the Safety of a Rehabilitation Robot for Critically Ill Patients

Abstract

Background: Critically ill and disabled patients require a lot of manpower during their rehabilitation. Artificial intelligence technology, which has the potential to improve the quality of care for critically ill patients, has been increasingly used for these patients' rehabilitation.Objective: To evaluate the safety of a rehabilitation robot in assisting the rehabilitation of critically ill patients. Method:One hundred patients in the intensive care unit of our hospital were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The rehabilitation robot was used in the experimental group to assist the patients' sitting, standing, lying on the side, lying prone, limb movement, pneumatic treatment, and vibration expectoration. For the control group, these operations were carried out by medical personnel. The differences in post-treatment values for vital signs and the frequency of adverse events, including infusion tube falling off, bedsore, and trauma, during treatment were compared between the two groups.Results: There were no differences in gender, age, body mass index, the status of complications, Barthel index, pre-treatment heart rate, pre-treatment mean arterial pressure or pre-treatment respiratory rate between the two groups. The differences in post-treatment values for vital signs and the frequency of infusion tube falling off during treatment were not significant between the two groups (P > 0.05). In addition, we did not observe bedsore and trauma in both groups during the treatment. Conclusion:The robot has shown satisfactory safety in assisting the rehabilitation of critically ill patients.