Postoperative Ward Monitoring—Why and What Now?

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2019

Publication Title

Best Pract Res Clin Anaesthesiol

Abstract

The postoperative ward is considered an ideal nursing environment for stable patients transitioning out of the hospital. However, approximately half of all in-hospital cardiorespiratory arrests occur here and are associated with poor outcomes. Current monitoring practices on the hospital ward mandate intermittent vital sign checks. Subtle changes in vital signs often occur at least 8–12 h before an acute event, and continuous monitoring of vital signs would allow for effective therapeutic interventions and potentially avoid an imminent cardiorespiratory arrest event. It seems tempting to apply continuous monitoring to every patient on the ward, but inherent challenges such as artifacts and alarm fatigue need to be considered. This review looks to the future where a continuous, smarter, and portable platform for monitoring of vital signs on the hospital ward will be accompanied with a central monitoring platform and machine learning-based pattern detection solutions to improve safety for hospitalized patients.

PubMed ID

31582102

ePublication

ePub ahead of print

Volume

33

Issue

2

First Page

229

Last Page

245

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