Combined detection of respiratory and cardiac rhythm disorders by high-resolution differential cuff pressure measurement

The aim of this paper is to present a new, noninvasive method to detect res piratory and cardiac rhythm disorders. We measure pressure variations withi n a lightly inflated cuff wrapped around the wrist, related to changes in t he blood arterial pressure. By suitable numerical processing, it is possibl e to extract from this signal the information on respiratory and cardiac rh ythms, as well as to detect and differentiate a number of sleep disorders s uch as central and obstructive apneas, The main ideas will be presented thr ough exemplary results with comments.