Professor Jerzy Sacha from the Department of Physiotherapy at the Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy of Opole University of Technology in southwestern Poland has proposed a modification to the ECG Holter (ambulatory electrocardiography device).
“Currently, two separate devices are used to record heart rate and monitor breathing. This, unfortunately, requires the use of separate equipment, which can bring several difficulties,” explained scientists. Prof. Sacha has suggested that respiratory frequency should also be read directly from the electrocardiographic waveform.
The holters developed by University of Technology scientists are designed to be user-friendly, and no additional training will be required to operate them. Work with the device can be performed in two modes. The first one is a standard system such as an ECG holter, where the doctor uses special software after completing the measurement to identify the so-called respiratory wave, and after the waveforms have been processed, the respiratory frequency is determined through postprocessing. The second method is to interfere with the structure of the device, enabling direct, real-time display of the measured respiratory rate.
"We plan to create a prototype of a device integrating ECG signal acquisition and respiratory rate calculation in the future", Professor Jerzy Sacha said.
(aj)
SOURCE: PAP
