EFFECT OF SAMPLING RATE ON THE ACCURACY OF MEASUREMENT OF NEONATAL OXYGEN SATURATION EXPOSURE

Abstract

Patient data management systems are becoming commonplace in the ICU. While their intent is to automate patient charting, they provide a readily accessible, large database that would be potentially useful for clinical research and quality improvement projects. We sought to determine if patient data management information could be of value describing neonatal oxygenation saturation exposure (percent time in oxemic-ranges). Our primary measure was the accuracy of 60-second sampling over a 24-hour period, as compared to previously reported results in 23 infants. We found this to be highly accurate. We also conducted a sensitivity analysis using 3 other sampling rates (20, 30, 120 seconds) and 3 other time epochs (4, 12 and 48 hours). We found that sampling frequency and time epoch length impacted accuracy. Nevertheless these combinations could all be useful, if limitations are taken into account in the analysis design.