• Nadine Hochhausen, Barbosa PereiraCarinaCPhilips Chair for Medical Information Technology, Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany. pereira@hia.rwth-aachen.de., Steffen Leonhardt, Rolf Rossaint, and Michael Czaplik.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany. nhochhausen@ukaachen.de.
• Sensors (Basel). 2018 May 18; 18 (5).

AbstractThe post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) is the central hub for recovery after surgery, especially when the surgery is performed under general anesthesia. Aside from clinical aspects, respiratory impairment is one of the major causes of morbidity and affected recovery in the PACU and should therefore be monitored. In previous studies, infrared thermography was applied to assess the breathing rate (BR) of healthy volunteers. Here, the transferability of published methods for postoperative patients in the PACU was examined. Video recordings of 28 patients were acquired using a long-wave infrared camera, and analyzed offline. For validation purposes, BRs derived from body surface electrocardiography were measured simultaneously. In general, a close agreement between the two techniques (r = 0.607, p = 0.002 upon arrival, and r = 0.849, p < 0.001 upon discharge from the PACU) was obtained. In conclusion, the algorithm was demonstrated to be feasible and reliable under these challenging conditions.

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