Post Discharge Cardiorespiratory Events in Preterm Infants

Background: Home monitors designed to identify cardiorespiratory events are frequently used for premature infants who suffer from persistent apneic and/ or bradycardic events after they are otherwise ready for discharge home.
Objective: We have hypothesized that using event recording monitor will characterize the events during home monitoring and identifies at what postconceptional age (PCA) the infants are event free.
Materials and Methods: 12 hours bedside four channel pneumogram was performed on 452 preterm infants born at ≤34 weeks of gestational age before hospital discharge. 108 infants had at least one episode of apnea≥20 second and/ or one episode of bradycardia< 80 beats per minute (BPM) for ≥5 second and they were considered symptomatic and discharged on event recording monitor. The monitor documented transthoracic impedance, electrocardiogram and heart rate. The monitor was downloaded at least once a month. An event was considered to be significant when an apnea lasted ≥20 seconds or when the heart rate was
Results: Duration of post discharge monitoring ranged from 4-30 weeks (median 7 weeks). When the patients were events free PCA ranged from 34-55 weeks (Median 39 weeks). Compliance for the usage of monitor for available days was 50-100% (median 100%). For daily use the time range was 8-12 hours (median 19 hours). During 152,664 hours of home monitoring 1,240 events were recorded. Of these events only 184 were apnea more than 20 seconds 47% of infants did not have apnea ≥20 seconds after discharge. 80% of infants with apneic episode had ≤5 episodes during home monitoring. Bradycardia without apnea of at least 20 seconds represented 32% of the events. 75% of bradycardiac episode were associated with short apnea (10±4 seconds).
Conclusions: Preterm infants discharged home on event recording monitor had low incidence of apnea ≥20 seconds. Using event record monitor will characterize the events during home monitoring and is helpful in determining the appropriate time of discontinue monitoring.

Keywords

Apnea

Home monitoring

Event recording

Full Text

Full text is available in PDF

Import into EndNote Import into BibTex

Share on

Comments

Number of Comments:0

Metrics

Purchasing Reprints

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) handles bulk orders for article reprints for Brieflands. To place an order for reprints, please click here ( https://www.copyright.com/landing/reprintsinquiryform/ ). Clicking this link will bring you to a CCC request form where you can provide the details of your order. Once complete, please click the ‘Submit Request’ button and CCC’s Reprints Services team will generate a quote for your review.

Search Relations

Author(s):

Nosrat Razi:[PubMed][Scholar]
Zubair Aghai:[PubMed][Scholar]
:[PubMed][Scholar]