| Life-threatening Events in
Infants |
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| Life-threatening events including bradycardia (slowing of the heart
beat) and apnea (cessation of breathing) in infants are a major health
concern for families and physicians. For events defined as “extreme
events” 20.6% (asymptomatic) to 33.0% (symptomatic) of infants
born prematurely had at least one event during a 180 day period. This
study is results from the Collaborative Home Infant Monitoring Evaluation
(CHIME) study group, formed by NIH, to gain a better understanding
of the nature of life-threatening events, their frequency and severity,
and the ability of home monitors to detect events and provide an alarm.
This group sought to study these issues through the collection of
a massive clinical database, over 360 gigabytes. The database includes
physiologic signals recorded from traditional polysomnographic (PSG)
studies and from a specially designed home monitor. Infants were classified
into four different groups upon entrance into the study: healthy,
preterm, SIDS siblings, and ALTE (infants with apparent life-threatening
events). Over 1000 infants were studied for several months using the
home monitor which recorded over 700,000 hours of data, including
life-threatening events (LTE), bradycardia and apnea. The result of
this study is an unprecedented collection of data from infants which
can be utilized to gain a better understanding of a variety of research
areas. |
