Epidemiology of patient monitoring alarms in the neonatal intensive care unit.

ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVE:To characterize the rate of monitoring alarms by alarm priority, signal type, and developmental age in a Level-IIIB Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) population. STUDY DESIGN:Retrospective analysis of 2,294,687 alarm messages from Philips monitors in a convenience sample of 917 NICU patients, covering 12,001 patient-days. We stratified alarm rates by alarm priority, signal type, postmenstrual age (PMA) and birth weight (BW), and reviewed and adjudicated over 21,000 critical alarms. RESULTS:Of all alarms, 3.6% were critical alarms, 55.0% were advisory alarms, and 41.4% were device alerts. Over 60% of alarms related to oxygenation monitoring. The average alarm rate (±SEM) was 177.1 ± 4.9 [median: 135.9; IQR: 89.2-213.3] alarms/patient-day; the medians varied significantly with PM

SUBMITTER: Li T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6092211 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature