ATTENTIV: Instrumented Peripheral Catheter for the Detection of Catheter Dislodgement in IV Infiltration

Intravenous (IV) infiltration is a common problem associated with IV infusion therapy in clinical practice. A multitude of factors can cause the leakage of IV fluids into the surrounding tissues, resulting in symptoms ranging from temporary swelling to permanent tissue damage. Severe infiltration outcomes can be avoided or minimized if the patient's care provider is alerted of the infiltration at its earliest onset. However, there is a lack of real-time, continuous infiltration monitoring solutions, especially those suited for clinical use for critically ill patients. Our design of the sensor-integrated ATTENTIV catheter allows direct detection of catheter dislodgement, a root cause of IV infiltration. We verify two detection methods: blood-tissue differentiation with a support vector machine and signal peak identification with a thresholding algorithm. We present promising preliminary testing results on biological and phantom models that utilize bioimpedance as the sensing modality. Clinical relevance— The sensor-embedded ATTENTIV catheter demonstrates potential to automate IV infiltration detection in lieu of using traditional infusion catheters and manual detection methods.