Combined detection of respiratory and cardiac rhythm disorders by high-resolution differential cuff pressure measurement

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a new, noninvasive method to detect respiratory and cardiac rhythm disorders. We measure pressure variations within a lightly inflated cuff wrapped around the wrist, related to changes in the blood arterial pressure. By suitable numerical processing, it is possible to extract from this signal the information on respiratory and cardiac rhythms, as well as to detect and differentiate a number of sleep disorders such as central and obstructive apneas. The main ideas are presented through exemplary results with comments.