Home Monitoring

After being discharged from the hospital parents are faced with a variety of new tasks and challenges, which are especially in the case of sick children, often accompanied with worry, insecurity and fear about the child, so that a normal everyday life is hard to cope with.

Home monitors are able to reliably support worried parents. These special monitors are designed to monitor oxygen saturation, respiration, heart rate or pulse rate of risk-children in all age groups in both clinical and ambulatory environments or during transport.  The monitors have found wide acceptance in monitoring infants, including preterm neonates and small children, where intensive supervision and care is especially important. The monitors can be used in a wide range of applications.

Indications for home monitoring may include:

• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in siblings.
• Premature infants born before 33rd week of gestation.
• Low birth weight neonates.
• Infants after ALTE(Apparent Life Threatening Event).
• Infants with unstable respiration and threatening arrhythmias.
• Premature infants with significant apnoeas at the time of hospital admission or requiring oxygen at home.
• Infants with tracheostoma.
• Children with conspicuous polysomnogram.

The monitors generate an acoustic and visual alarm when no respiration or movement is detected for a preset time , i.e. central apnoea or when the measured oxygen saturation or heart/pulse rate violates the limits set by the operator.  Ideally there is the option in the monitors that the apnoea alarms can be combined with heart rate-and oxygen saturation alarms so that false alarms can be reduced drastically.