Investigating Stroke Effects on Respiratory Parameters Using a Wearable Device: A Pilot Study on Hemiplegic Patients

Quantitatively assessing personal health status is gaining increasing attention due to the improvement of diagnostic technology and the increasing occurrence of chronic pathologies. Monitoring physiological parameters allows for retrieving a general overview of the personal health status. Respiratory activity can provide relevant information, especially when pathologies affect the muscles and organs involved in breathing. Among many technologies, wearables may represent a valid solution for continuous and remote monitoring of respiratory activity, thus reducing healthcare costs. The most popular wearables used in this arena are based on detecting the breathing-induced movement of the chest wall. Therefore, their use in patients with impaired chest wall motion and abnormal respiratory kinematics can be challenging, but literature is still in its infancy. This study investigates the performance of a custom wearable device for respiratory monitoring in post-stroke patients. We tested the device on six hemiplegic patients under different respiratory regimes. The estimated respiratory parameters (i.e., respiratory frequency and the timing of the respiratory phase) demonstrated good agreement with the ones provided by a gold standard device. The promising results of this pilot study encourage the exploitation of wearables on these patients that may strongly impact the treatment of chronic diseases, such as hemiplegia.