Respiratory Variability for Respiratory Monitoring During the Postoperative Recovery Period

Overview

The research consist of measuring respiratory variability of several variables of the respiratory pattern at rest and during exercise using a thoracic movement measuring technique. The objective is to confirm the ability of this technique to measure the respiratory variability in healthy subjects comparing to flow measurements by a pneumotachograph. In a second step, the thoracic movement technique is applied to measure respiratory variability before and after surgery in patients after abdominal surgery with laparotomy. The objective is to observe a decrease of variability in subjects developing or at risk to develop a postoperative pulmonary complication.

The incidence of Postoperative Pulmonary Complications after non-thoracic surgery varie between 2 and 19%. Postoperative Pulmonary Complications are associated with an increase of morbi-mortality and longer hospital stays. However, few possibilities are available to identify Postoperative Pulmonary Complications except predictions scores and SpO2, which decreases only face to a significant lung disease. Besides, the respiratory variability decreases during pulmonary stress situations, and is associated with an increase of mortality during mechanical ventilation. The hypothesis is that a decrease of the respiratory variability between the preoperative and the postoperative measures is associated with an increase of Postoperative Pulmonary Complications . However there is no mesuring tool of easy access in clinical practice. That is why, in a first step, a thoracic sensor belt will be tested on healthy subjects. This sensor belt is available to measure the respiratory variability.