Two-electrode telemetric instrument for infant heart rate and apnea monitoring.

Infants may be at risk of life threatening episodes caused by still unknown factors. The Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is believed to be connected with respiration problems due to immature and developing brain breathing control, and many other factors. Currently heart rate and respiration monitoring is considered of major importance to be applied in the hospital and eventually at hoinc. The objective is accurate detection of bradycardia (heart rate below a selected limit, usually between 80 and 100 beats/min) and apnea (cessation of breathing for more than 20 s). A telemetric instrument was developed for monitoring the heart rate and respiration by extraction of the respiration signal from the electrocardiogram QRS complex peak-to-peak amplitude. It makes use of two electrodes integrated in a transmitter module, thus avoiding use of leads and also reducing artifacts to an acceptable minimum. The receiver station can be a simple detector with apnea and bradycardia alarms, a more complicated recorder or a fully developed signal analyser.