A t-shirt that monitors a patient’s vitals after urological surgery for cancer could help people return home from hospital sooner.
The device, worn for about two weeks under clothing for three-hour intervals each day, made patients feel safer and more reassured than a control group in a pilot study involving 70 individuals.
The results were presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Madrid.
Antonio L. Pastore, Associate Professor of Urology at Sapienza University of Rome, and his colleagues sought to determine whether patients could be discharged earlier than the current standard after undergoing robot-assisted urological surgery for cancer.
Discharging patients sooner enhances their quality of life and frees up hospital beds.
The team collaborated with LET’s Webearable Solutions, a company specialising in telemonitoring, to design a lightweight T-shirt equipped with sensors that monitor ECG, respiratory rate, heart rate, body temperature and more.
The wearable technology transmits data to an app and web-based software. In a control group, patients were discharged as usual three to five days after surgery. In the ‘wearable’ group, they were discharged 24 to 36 hours earlier, within two to four days after surgery.
They received a t-shirt to monitor vital parameters, including:
• Blood pressure
• Pulse rate
• Saturation
• Blood glucose.
Antonio Pastore said: ‘The t-shirt we gave to patients differs from smartwatches and other wearables. It can reveal more data, including electrolytes, which we need to continue to monitor after bladder surgery as they can reveal mineral imbalances that lead to serious complications.’
In the control group, eight patients (26%) accessed the hospital before their scheduled follow-up compared with two patients, just 6%, in the wearable group.
The monitoring by the t-shirt also detected the onset of cardiological conditions in five patients, enabling early diagnosis and treatment. The average remote monitoring period was 13.5 days, and the overall satisfaction rate among patients in this group was 90%.
Only 10% of patients struggled to understand the telemedicine-based instructions, while 87% found them compelling and encouraging.
Antonio Pastore said: ‘Our patients found the t-shirt easy to use, and over 90% reported it allowed them to feel safe and cared for while recuperating at home. In Italy, where standard discharge time after this type of robotic-assisted urological surgery can be at least 72 hours, allowing patients home sooner improves their quality of life as they feel more comfortable in their environment, which means we can free up hospital beds, too.’
Commenting on the study, Professor Maarten Albersen, Urologist at UZ Leuven, Belgium, and EAU Scientific Congress Office Chair, said: ‘This sensory t-shirt appears to be a promising remote monitoring technology for helping patients to recover well at home after robotic-assisted urological surgery. The trial is in the early stages, but the insights are very interesting, particularly since patients strongly accepted the wearables, and it was able to detect complications in real-time and reduce unnecessary rehospitalisations.
‘Given the small size and preliminary nature of the trial, before we can see this wearable in clinical practice, more data is needed on its ability to support earlier discharge from hospital, and its true impact on outcomes and cost-effectiveness.’
Researchers are now examining the cost-effectiveness of the technology.
