Affiliations: [a] Bio-signal Processing Research Group, Faculty of Biosciences and Medical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai 81310, Malaysia | [b] Pengarah Pusat Kesihatan Mahasiswa, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai 81310, Malaysia
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Om Prakash Singh, Bio-signal Processing Research Group (BSPRG), Faculty of Biosciences and Medical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai 81310, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 7 5535982; E-mail: bioom85@yahoo.com.
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Assessment of asthma outside of the hospital using a patient independent device is highly in demand due to the limitation of existing devices, which are manual and unreliable if patients are not cooperative. OBJECTIVE: The study aims to verify the use of newly developed human respiration, carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement device for the management of asthma outside of the hospital. METHOD: The data were collected from 60 subjects aged between 18–35 years via convenience sampling method reported in UTM Health Center using the device. Furthermore, the data were normalized and analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, and area (Az) under receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). RESULT: Findings revealed that the normalized mean values of end-tidal carbon dioxide (EtCO2), Hjorth Activity (HA), and respiratory rate (RR) were lower in asthmatic compared with healthy subjects with minimum deviation from the mean. In addition, each parameter was found to significantly differ statistically for asthma and non-asthma with p< 0.05. Furthermore, the Az shows the strong association for the screening of asthma and non-asthma with an average of 0.71 (95% CI: 0.57–0.83), 0.77 (95% CI: 0.64–0.90), and 0.83 (95% CI: 0.73–0.94) for RR, EtCO2, and HA, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that the newly developed handheld human respiration CO2 measurement device may possibly be used as an effort-independent asthma management method outside of the hospital.
Keywords: Asthma, capnography, early screening, CO2 measurement
