Heart rate characteristics: physiomarkers for detection of late-onset neonatal sepsis.

ABSTRACT: Early detection of late-onset neonatal sepsis, before the onset of obvious and potentially catastrophic clinical signs, is an important goal in neonatal medicine. Sepsis causes a well-known series of physiologic changes including abnormalities of blood pressure, respiration, temperature, and heart rate, and less well-known changes in heart rate variability. Although vital signs are frequently or continuously monitored in patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), changes in these parameters are subtle in the early phase of sepsis and difficult to interpret using traditional NICU monitoring tools. A new tool, continuous monitoring of heart rate characteristics (HRC), is now available for clinical use. Recent research has established that 2 abnormalities of HRC that have long been

SUBMITTER: Fairchild KD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2933427 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature