Masimo (NSDQ:MASI) announced today that its study of the Masimo Patient SafetyNet and rainbow acoustic monitoring (RAM) with RRa revealed that use of monitoring systems might provide a safety net for postoperative patients.
Irvine, Calif.-based Masimo’s Patient SafetyNet is a supplemental remote monitoring patient surveillance and clinician notification system designed to work with Masimo and third-party bedside monitoring systems to display real-time data. RAM with RRA is designed to use an acoustic transducer on a patient’s neck for noninvasive continuous respiration monitoring.
The study was constructed to monitor patients in the general ward of the hospital and see how common desaturation and bradypnea (abnormally slow breathing) occurrences are for non-ICU patients without serious complications. Patients were monitored with a pulse oximeter and an RRa sensor for at least eight hours after surgery and data was transferred to the Patient SafetyNet. Results were published in the Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing.
Analyzing 1,064 adult patients who underwent general anesthesia for various surgical procedures over four months, the study found that 12.1% of patients showed desaturation, with most occurring after termination of oxygen administration and 40.8% of events occurring more than eight hours after surgery.
A total of 5.1% patients exhibited bradypnea, with 72.3% of events coming during oxygen supplementation. Age, body mass index and current smoking status were factors for desaturation and sleep apnea and postoperative opioid administration played a part in bradypnea.
Researchers concluded that, based on the data collected, using the respiratory monitoring system postoperatively for overnight patients in the general ward is beneficial to the safety of the patients, especially for those with risk factors of respiratory depression.
“Continuous and centralized monitoring of oxygen saturation and respiratory rate can detect respiratory depression before it results in critical events such as cardiac arrest,” the study’s researchers said in a news release. “Several methods of respiratory rate monitoring are currently used, including manual counting of breaths by a caregiver, capnography, and transthoracic impedance measurement. Manual counting of breaths (such as auscultation) is an intermittent, labor-intensive and unreliable method. Capnography provides accurate and continuous monitoring, but requires a nasal or facial interface, which can be uncomfortable and may lead to failure if the interface is moved. Transthoracic impedance is non-invasive and can detect respiratory efforts, but is unable to detect alveolar hypoventilation caused by airway obstruction.”
“RRa is an acoustic monitoring device that continuously measures respiratory rate, and is as accurate as capnography in extubated patients,” the researchers added. “Patient activities, such as talking, coughing and crying, affect the results of both RRa and capnography. The measurement errors during these activities are, however, not clinically relevant because they require that the patients are awake and breathing. Further, the RRa sensor appears to be well-tolerated and no more subject to error than capnography. RRa was found to be a reliable device and had fewer complications in this study.”
