Quantification of haemodynamic response to auditory stimulus in intensive care

Measuring effects of sensory stimuli on haemodynamics could provide informa tion about the interplay between central and autonomous nervous system (ANS ). However, ANS response to sensory stimulus has received little attention. In this paper we present a signal processing scheme to extract the respons es of heart rate and systemic arterial pressure on auditory stimulus in int ensive care patients (N = 5). In short, the effect of mechanical ventilatio n is rejected by optimal linear modelling. Other disturbances are attenuate d by filtering and efficient rejection of outlying sweeps of data. The resu lts Show identifiable responses on three out of five cases. The response ch aracteristics may be explained by synchronisation of spontaneous variabilit y in systemic arterial pressure to auditory stimulus. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sci ence Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.