Auditory displays in anesthesiology

We outline and discuss recent work on auditory displays, covering both auditory alarms that indicate technical or physiological threshold levels and informative auditory displays that provide a continuous awareness of a patient's well being.

The struggle to make auditory alarms informative proceeds with work on two fronts. In one approach, researchers are developing and evaluating auditory alarm displays to indicate the source and urgency of off-normal states and are relying on the emergence of smart software algorithms to reduce the false-positive rate. In a complementary approach, other researchers are providing information about the patient's well being in normal as well as abnormal states, generalizing the advantages of variable-tone pulse oximetry to other systems and other auditory display formats. In either approach, a multidisciplinary team is essential in the design and evaluation of auditory displays. Because informative auditory displays may subtly change clinical practice, there are repercussions for training.

Auditory display in anesthesia can extend well beyond auditory alarms to displays that give the anesthesiologist a continuous peripheral awareness of patient well being. Much more rigorous approaches should be taken to evaluating auditory displays so they add information rather than noise.