The implementation of an apnea-based perinatal stress calculator

• Published in: 2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) Vol. 2019; pp. 6000 - 6003
• Main Authors: Lavanga, M, Naulaers, G, Van Huffel, S, Wel, O De, Caicedo, A, Deviaene, M, Moeyersons, J, Varon, C, Bollen, B, Jansen, K, Ortibus, E
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.07.2019
• Subjects: Brain modeling; Electroencephalography; Heart rate variability; Pain; Pediatrics; Rail to rail inputs; Stress
• ISSN: 1557-170X; 1558-4615
• DOI: 10.1109/EMBC.2019.8856955

Early life stress in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) predisposes premature infants to adverse health outcomes. Although those patients experience frequent apneas and sleep-wake disturbances during their hospital stay, clinicians still rely on clinical scales to assess pain and stress burden. This study addresses the relationship between stress and apneic spells in NICU patients to implement an automatic stress detector. EEG, ECG and SpO 2 were recorded from 40 patients for at least 3 hours and the stress burden was assessed using the Leuven Pain Scale. Different logistic regression models were designed to detect the presence or the absence of stress based on the signals reactivity to each apneic spell. The classification shows that stress can be detected with an area under the curve of 0.94 and a misclassification error of 19.23%. These results were obtained via SpO 2 dips and EEG regularity. These findings suggest that stress deepens the physiological reaction to apneas, which could ultimately impact the neurological and behavioral development.