APNEA DETECTION SYSTEM FOR NICU MONITORING

Sleep apnea or sleep disordered breathing (SDA) occurs commonly among patients who have a stroke and may significantly complicate post-stroke recovery. SDB can be effectively treated and yet this treatment is not made available to patients on neurological intensive care units (NICU) owing to the problems of organizing requisite materials and expertise. Thus, the patients fail to get the needed treatment at the most critical recovery time when treatment would probably be the most beneficial. This project seeks to correct this problem by developing and apnea detection and reporting (ADR) system for use with existing monitoring equipment on the NICU. This system provides for easy, rapid identification of SDB events permitting starting treatment, if needed, shortly after entry to the NICU. The system provides data storage, convenient display and printouts of events and event rates. It uses technology developed by IM Systems for accurate recording and automatic detection of events. The system will automatically alert the staff when excessive SDB events occur. Phase 1 develops a prototype and evaluates its accuracy. Phase 2 improves the design and extends the use of system to a wide range of patients in the NICU.