Two RespiraSense™ Clinical Research Posters, on the efficacy of respiratory rate monitoring, developed in collaboration with our centre of excellence will be on show in Belfast on Thursday, 24th and Friday, 25th January as part of the BOMMS Scientific Meeting.
Clinical Study Description
The respiratory rate is an important parameter in clinical medicine. It is defined as the number of breaths per minute. Currently this is measured at the bedside in clinical practice by counting the breaths, however, the gold standard for measuring this vital sign is the capnograph. For the patient, this involves wearing a tube in their nose and around their ears while trying to minimise their movement and talking so that the measurements can be taken.
A new respiratory rate monitor, RespiraSense™, is non-invasive and measures the respiratory rate by measuring the displacement between the ribs and abdomen. This research study is intended to validate that this technology is effective and accurate on people with a bigger body mass.
Subjects with a BMI > 35 were invited to participate once they met all of the eligibility criteria. Following informed consent, subjects were monitored for one hour with both the capnograph and RespiraSense™ measuring at the same time so their results could be compared.
Myles Murray, CEO of PMD Solutions, explains “after bariatric surgery, postoperative respiratory complications from a combination of restriction in lung volume, side effects of anesthesia and the use of opioids to manage pain means Respiratory Rate must be monitored closely. However, this is often not the case as RR is extremely difficult to measure using existing methods in obese and severely obese patients. We have shown in this study that RespiraSense™ accurately measures Respiratory Rate in patients with a BMI above 40 kg/m2 when compared with the gold standard and in a thematic analysis of qualitative data, that patients had a preference for RespiraSense™. This really complements our existing clinical evidence base and validates the accuracy and utility of RespiraSense™ across the widest possible range of body types.”
“RespiraSense™ was specifically designed to be easily adopted by healthcare providers in order to serve the broadest population of patients in the shortest possible time. Delivering respiratory rate to the market through RespiraSense™ will enable PMD to work with leading university hospitals as centres of excellence to continually demonstrate this innovations impact to patient care.” adds Myles Murray, CEO.
RespiraSense™ is the world’s first respiratory rate wearable specifically designed for trend monitoring of acute patients. RespiraSense™ is a novel technology that provides medical staff with an alert to abnormal breathing, one of the earliest signs of possible patient deterioration from conditions such as respiratory compromise, worsening pneumonia, increasing the severity of sepsis, and oncoming heart attacks, through trend monitoring respiratory rate. Respiratory rate is shown to be the earliest and most sensitive sign of patient deterioration. The benefit of having RespiraSense™ is that it can support the timely identification of deterioration, leading to improved interventions, resulting in better patient outcomes – lower length of stay, fewer preventable ICU admittance, and lower cost of care. RespiraSense™ has been successfully trialled in the perioperative setting and it is a timely technology that will address the global clinical need for robust monitoring of patients on the general and post-operative care floors.
The abstracts describing the positive results of the clinical study will be published online in the Obesity Surgery Journal and are entitled – “The accuracy of Respiratory Rate measurement using the novel RespiraSense™ device compared to gold-standard capnography – a useful tool for the bariatric unit?” and “Assessment of patient acceptability of Respiratory Rate measurement in severely obese patients using the novel RespiraSense™ device.”