Epidemiology of Patient Monitoring Alarms in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the rate of monitoring alarms by alarm priority, signal type and developmental age in a Level-IIIB Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) population. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of 2 294 687 alarm messages from Philips monitors in a convenience sample of 917 NICU patients, covering 12 001 patient-days. We stratified alarm rates by alarm priority, signal type, postmenstrual age (PMA), and birth weight (BW) and reviewed and adjudicated over 21 000 critical alarms. RESULTS: Of all alarms, 3.6% were critical alarms, 55.0% were advisory alarms, and 41.4% were device alerts. Over 60% of alarms related to oxygenation monitoring. The average alarm rate (±SEM) was 177.1±4.9 [median: 135.9; IQR: 89.2–213.3] alarms/patient-day; the medians varied significantly with PMA and BW (p<0.001) in U-shaped patterns, with higher rates at lower and higher PMA and BW. Based on waveform reviews, over 99% of critical arrhythmia alarms were deemed technically false. CONCLUSIONS: The alarm burden in this NICU population is very significant; the average alarm rate significantly underrepresents alarm rates at low and high PMA and BW. Virtually all critical arrhythmia alarms were artifactual.