Objective dyspnea evaluation on COVID-19 patients learning from exertion-induced dyspnea scores

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that non-invasive wearable sensors can objectively monitor dyspnea progression in COVID-19 patients, with findings comparable to physiologically induced dyspnea in healthy subjects, enabling continuous assessment and early intervention.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel wearable sensor-based method for continuous, objective dyspnea assessment in COVID-19 patients, validated against a model of exertion-induced dyspnea in healthy individuals.

Findings

High similarity between COVID-19 dyspnea and exertion-induced dyspnea in healthy subjects

Continuous dyspnea scores can be reliably tracked over 12-16 hours

Objective dyspnea assessment can aid early detection of exacerbations

Abstract

Objective: Dyspnea is one of the most common symptoms for many pulmonary diseases including COVID-19. Clinical assessment of dyspnea is mainly performed by subjective self-report, which has limited accuracy and is challenging for continuous monitoring. The objective of this research study is to determine if dyspnea progression in COVID patients can be assessed using a non-invasive wearable sensor and if the findings are comparable to a learning model of physiologically induced dyspnea on healthy subjects. Methods: Non-invasive wearable respiratory sensors were employed to retrieve continuous respiratory characteristics with user comfort and convenience. Overnight (~16h) respiratory waveforms were collected on 12 COVID-19 patients, and a benchmark on 13 healthy subjects with exertion-induced dyspnea were also performed for blind comparison. The learning model was built from the respiratory features with self report on 32 healthy subjects under exertion and airway blockage. Results: High similarity between dyspnea on COVID patients and physiologically induced dyspnea on healthy subjects was established. COVID patients have consistently high objective dyspnea scores in comparison with normal breathing of healthy subjects. We also exhibited continuous dyspnea scoring capability for 12-16 hours on patients. Conclusion: This paper validates the viability to use our objective dyspnea scoring for clinical dyspnea assessment on COVID patients. Significance: The proposed system can help the identification of dyspneic exacerbation in conditions such as COVID, leading to early intervention and possibly improving their outcome. This approach can be potentially applied to other pulmonary disorders such as asthma, emphysema, and pneumonia.