Alarms on the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit

Patients admitted to the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit are closely monitored by different devices that generate alarms when an abnormality is detected. However, most alarms do not signify a life-threatening event. During a four month period 34,827 alarms were collected electronically. The most frequent alarm categories were related to mechanical ventilation (42.2%), blood pressure (32.3%), electrocardiogram (9.8%) and heart rate (8.1%). 2750 (7.9%) of the alarms were not related to limit violations, but were technical advisories. Overall alarm frequency was 2.2 per patient per hour. However, the distribution over time varied greatly and alarm “bursts” were seen when blood samples were taken and patients were woken. Reduction in alarms could be achieved by reducing overuse of monitoring parameters, utilizing patient specific limits and combining alarms within the “bursts”.