• E Paterson, P M Sanderson, PatersonN A BNABSchool of Clinical Medicine, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Management, Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, 501 Stanley Street, South Brisbane, Queensland 4101, Australia, and R G Loeb.
• School of Psychology.
• Br J Anaesth. 2017 Dec 1; 119 (6): 1224-1230.

BackgroundAnaesthetists monitor auditory information about a patient's vital signs in an environment that can be noisy and while performing other cognitively demanding tasks. It can be difficult to identify oxygen saturation (SpO2) values using existing pulse oximeter auditory displays (sonifications).MethodsIn a laboratory setting, we compared the ability of non-clinician participants to detect transitions into and out of an SpO2 target range using five different sonifications while they performed a secondary distractor arithmetic task in the presence of background noise. The control sonification was based on the auditory display of current pulse oximeters and comprised a variable pitch with an alarm. The four experimental conditions included an Alarm Only condition, a Variable pitch only condition, and two conditions using sonifications enhanced with additional sound dimensions. Accuracy to detect SpO2 target transitions was the primary outcome.ResultsWe found that participants using the two sonifications enhanced with the additional sound dimensions of tremolo and brightness were significantly more accurate (83 and 96%, respectively) at detecting transitions to and from a target SpO2 range than participants using a pitch only sonification plus alarms (57%) as implemented in current pulse oximeters.ConclusionsEnhanced sonifications are more informative than conventional sonification. The implication is that they might allow anaesthetists to judge better when desaturation decreases below, or returns to, a target range.© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Journal of Anaesthesia. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

21 keywords...

hide…