• Taibo Li, Minoru Matsushima, Wendy Timpson, Susan Young, David Miedema, Munish Gupta, and Thomas Heldt.
• Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
• J Perinatol. 2018 Aug 1; 38 (8): 1030-1038.

ObjectiveTo characterize the rate of monitoring alarms by alarm priority, signal type, and developmental age in a Level-IIIB Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) population.Study DesignRetrospective analysis of 2,294,687 alarm messages from Philips monitors in a convenience sample of 917 NICU patients, covering 12,001 patient-days. We stratified alarm rates by alarm priority, signal type, postmenstrual age (PMA) and birth weight (BW), and reviewed and adjudicated over 21,000 critical alarms.ResultsOf all alarms, 3.6% were critical alarms, 55.0% were advisory alarms, and 41.4% were device alerts. Over 60% of alarms related to oxygenation monitoring. The average alarm rate (±SEM) was 177.1 ± 4.9 [median: 135.9; IQR: 89.2-213.3] alarms/patient-day; the medians varied significantly with PMA and BW (p < 0.001) in U-shaped patterns, with higher rates at lower and higher PMA and BW. Based on waveform reviews, over 99% of critical arrhythmia alarms were deemed technically false.ConclusionsThe alarm burden in this NICU population is very significant; the average alarm rate significantly underrepresents alarm rates at low and high PMA and BW. Virtually all critical arrhythmia alarms were artifactual.

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