Structured Light Plethysmography in Obstructive Airways Disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Structured Light Plethysmography in Children Admitted due to Acute Obstructive Airways Disease
IRAS ID
237151
Contact name
Richard Iles
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Guy´s and St Thomas´ Foundation NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 27 days
Research summary
Can the clinical course of respiratory distress be quantified and the treatment improved in children with acute breathing difficulty using a new non-touch non-invasive SLP measurement device?
Obstructive airways disease is the most common group of acute illnesses leading to hospital treatment in children. This group consists of different age-related diagnoses, such as bronchiolitis in infants or wheezing and asthma in older children. Though these entities overlap with each other, they have common characteristics and the same leading symptom, breathing difficulty.
Asthma is the most common disease in childhood, 1 out of 11 children have asthma in the UK. One out of two asthmatics need hospital care each year. On average, hospital admissions last 5-10 days. This quadruples the costs, and if intensive care is needed, the costs are 20-times compared to outpatient costs.
Thora3Di is a new CE- and FDA-approved medical device able to measure chest and abdominal wall movements during tidal breathing with a method called structured light plethysmography (SLP). The method is non-touch and non-invasive, it does not need any connection with the child.
One-month- to 12-years-old infants and children are recruited from the paediatric wards at Evelina Children’s hospital. The child lies or sits within the field of vision of the SLP device with their chest and abdomen exposed. A grid pattern of normal light will be projected onto the chest and changes in the format of the grid as the infant or child breathes will be recorded by the SLP device. Data will be collected for each child for 3-5 minutes once in 24 hour periods for 2-10 times during hospital stay.
Our aim is to reduce duration of hospital stay by finding predicting parameters for obstructive airways diseases with the new SLP method, and further aim to standardization of treatment strategies, to reduce expenditure.
REC name
London - Westminster Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/0668
Date of REC Opinion
22 May 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion