Monitoring trends in cardiac surgery

Proposes a way of monitoring trend information during cardiac surgery and postoperative intensive care. The method has been developed on the basis of 51 recordings carried out at the Royal Brompton Hospital and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London in the course of the EU Biomed-2 project "Improved Monitoring for Brain Dysfunction in Intensive Care and Surgery" (IBIS). The authors use two channels of EEG, central venous pressure (CVP), systemic arterial pressure (SAP) and core temperature. Root mean square (RMS) value of 2 second segments of EEG signal, mean value of 2 second segments of CVP signal and beat-to-beat values of systolic, diastolic and mean arterial pressure are calculated and displayed. An algorithm has been developed to detect sudden steps and significant slopes in RMS value of the EEG signal after artefact rejection. The research was supported by funding from the European Commission under contract BMH4-97-2570.