[Design of portable blood pressure depressor based on slow breathing training]

Clinical studies had demonstrated that slow breathing could lower blood pressure significantly. Based on this knowledge, a portable blood pressure depressor was designed in this study. The device used a miniature variable distance capacitive sensor to collect respiratory signal, an STM32 as the main control chip, a WT588D voice chip to generate voice and music and guide slow breathing, and a 3.5-inch color screen to display breathing state and provide guidance. For patients with difficulty in adapting themselves to the slow breathing training, an intelligent guiding breathing algorithm based on feedback regulation mechanism was proposed to train patients to breathe slowly. Ten volunteers with hypertension were recruited and then trained to breathe slowly, accumulating up to 100 times using this device. The results showed that breath rate of the volunteers decreased from 15.16±0.92 times per minute to 9.40±0.29 times per minute, and meanwhile, time length of breath rate less than 8 times per minute in the proportion of total treatment time increased from 0.079±0.017 to 0.392±0.019 as the training times increased. In a conclusion, the proposed blood pressure depressor worked effectively in guiding slow breathing training.