Pre-surgery Stress Monitoring Using Heart Rate Variability Measures

Pre-surgery stress is common in patients hospitalized for undergoing surgeries. High levels of stress could prolong post-operative recovery time, increasing the duration of hospitalization. Abnormally high stress levels could sometimes have irreversible impacts, leading to post-operative physiological and psychological disorders. Continuous monitoring of patients during the pre-operative period could help in taking necessary measures to control the stress levels. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the signals which is usually monitored continuously for patients in clinical settings. The usability of ECG for Heart Rate Variability (HRV) based stress detection has been explored in this study. HRV features derived from ECG data acquired from 51 patients admitted in the surgical ward during their pre-operative phase were studied. The trend of the features showed similarity in pre-surgery stress experienced by the patients. Using chest leads connected by wires to a wrist wearable for collecting ECG was obtrusive to patients and resulted in loss of more than 50% of the data. Unobtrusive data collection using chest patches can make HRV based stress detection feasible for clinical use. However, an additional monitoring system would require additional responsibility on the part of the healthcare staff involved in patient care. Integrating the HRV based stress detection into the patient monitors already being used in these clinical settings could therefore make the monitoring of stress feasible.