Examples of Current Research Topics:
Right Ventricular Conductance Volumetry
This research work focuses on developing new methods to measure continuous, real-time right ventricular volume using a conductance catheter. The conductance catheter is a modified Swan-Ganz catheter with ten equally spaced electrodes at its distal end. By measuring right ventricular volume continuously and in real time, several cardiac parameters such as ejection fraction, cardiac output, pressure-volume loops and contractility can be obtained. These parameters serve as valuable indices of cardiac function and their continuous and real-time measurement will greatly enhance critical care.
Automated Anesthesia Record Keeping System
An automated Anesthesia Record Keeping System (ARKS) is being developed that will enable automatic data acquisition and simplify anesthesia record keeping process. This, in turn, will lead to standardizing anesthesia records and make them more accurate. Anesthesia-related information that is collected and stored by the ARK system will be useful for future clinical research. In addition, the ARK system will automate and simplify the patient billing process.
Closed-loop Control Blood Glucose Levels
A closed-loop system to automatically control blood glucose levels in surgical diabetic patients is being developed. The system consists of a glucose monitor, an insulin delivery pump and computer running a glucose control algorithm. The system measures glucose levels automatically every 15 minutes, computes a new insulin dosage and administers the dose to bring the blood glucose levels within a desirable range. Insulin dosages are prescribed by an adaptive algorithm that is implemented as part of a main closed-loop control computer program. The adaptive algorithm is developed with the help of a glucose-insulin homeostasis model. Tight regulation of glucose levels in diabetic patients leads to faster recovery and better surgical outcome.
Patient Hypothermia Study
It is suspected that when cardiac surgery patients are cooled to low temperatures for long periods of time when on a bypass machine that they will have a poorer outcome. This study measures the patients temperature in three locations, esophageal, blood and bladder. This data will be correlated with the patients severity score to determine if the cooling has an effect on patient outcome. The data is being collected with a software program that is extracting data present on the patient physiological monitoring network.
Force of Intubation Study
This study is designed to determine the best patient position for intubation. A laryngoscope blade is equipped with pressure transducers and the force of intubation is measured. The transducers are interfaced to a computer program that calculates the force of the blade on the patient tissues. The patients will be intubated in various positions in order to determine the most effective intubation position.