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 Infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) typically have a
large number of sensors attached to their skin, with wires emanating
from them. The new system, which was tested in a study reported in
Science, accomplishes monitoring through two ultrathin wireless
sensors that transmit the baby's vital signs to a base where the
information can be processed in real time.
The sensors - one above the baby's heart and the other on the
infant's heel - "are almost like an electronic temporary tattoo,"
said study coauthor John Rogers, director of the Center for
Bio-Integrated Electronics at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Illinois. "They gently, non-invasively laminate onto the surface of
the skin. They are imperceptible. You don't even know they are
there."
Standard sensors can damage a premature baby's skin, he added.
"Premature babies, especially those at gestational ages less than 30
weeks, have skin that is highly underdeveloped, "Rogers said. "It's
very common that these babies receive injury to the skin when
peeling away the tapes."
Another advantage of the new system is that the sensors don't need
to be plugged in to a power source. They charge up in a similar way
to some of the modern phones that charge wirelessly, Rogers said.
The baby just needs to be within a meter from the antenna that
receives vital signs information and the device that allows the
sensors to keep charged, Rogers said. That means "mothers can be
sitting in a chair (with the antenna mounted on the base) and have
skin to skin contact and cuddling," he said.
Skin to skin cuddling of low-birthweight infants has been shown to
reduce mortality, severe illness, infection and length of hospital
stay. Cardiorespiratory stability, sleep quality, neurodevelopment,
breastfeeding and pain also appear to be improved when preemies have
skin to skin contact during their hospital stay.
The new system provides information on skin temperature, heart rate,
respiration rate and blood oxygenation. And because the two sensors
are sending data in real time, it's possible to measure how quickly
blood is flowing through the body, allowing doctors to calculate
blood pressure, which is hard to measure in these tiny, fragile
babies, Rogers said.
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The new study is "fascinating," said Dr. Katherine Hoops, an
assistant professor of pediatric critical care medicine at Johns
Hopkins Medicine. "Innovations in monitoring that facilitate
mobility have great potential benefit."
Among the advantages of this new system is that it allows the baby
"to be moved around without any worries about wires," said Dr.
Rakesh Sahni, a professor of pediatrics at Columbia University
Irving Medical Center and medical director of the NICU at the
NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. "And it
allows the parents to hold their baby without worrying about whether
the baby is still connected or if the wires are coming off."
While calling the new system is "a really important step in
improving care for our patient population," Dr. Thomas Diacovo
predicted that when it becomes available, not many hospitals would
use it right away because of the cost. But there is one setting in
which it could be implemented immediately, said Diacovo, chief of
the newborn medicine program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center.
"It would have tremendous value when you go on transport," Diacovo
said. Currently "you have to take a lot of equipment to a
potentially remote location and hook the baby up to various
monitors. This sort of wireless system where information can be
transmitted back to the home hospital could have tremendous value."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2NJGTsl and http://bit.ly/2NGmMeK Science,
online March 1, 2018.
(This story was refiled to correct spelling of Dr. Sahni's name in
paragraph 10.)
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