Performance of regional oxygen saturation monitoring by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in pediatric inter-hospital transports with special reference to air ambulance transports: a methodological study

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of regional oxygen saturation (rSO(2)) monitoring with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) during pediatric inter-hospital transports and to optimize processing of the electronically stored data. Cerebral (rSO(2)-C) and abdominal (rSO(2)-A) NIRS sensors were used during transport in air ambulance and connecting ground ambulance. Data were electronically stored by the monitor during transport, extracted and analyzed off-line after the transport. After removal of all zero and floor effect values, the Savitzky–Golay algorithm of data smoothing was applied on the NIRS-signal. The second order of smoothing polynomial was used and the optimal number of neighboring points for the smoothing procedure was evaluated. NIRS-data from 38 pediatric patients was examined. Reliability, defined as measurements without values of 0 or 15%, was acceptable during transport (> 90% of all measurements). There were, however, individual patients with < 90% reliable measurements during transport, while no patient was found to have < 90% reliable measurements in hospital. Satisfactory noise reduction of the signal, without distortion of the underlying information, was achieved when 20–50 neighbors (“window-size”) were used. The use of NIRS for measuring rSO(2) in clinical studies during pediatric transport in ground and air-ambulance is feasible but hampered by unreliable values and signal interference. By applying the Savitzky–Golay algorithm, the signal-to-noise ratio was improved and enabled better post-hoc signal evaluation.