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Skin Resistance as a Physiological Indicator for Quadriplegics with Spinal Cord Injuries During Activities of Daily Living

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Smart Health (ICSH 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9545))

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Abstract

Approximately 30–50 % of all persons with a spinal cord injury (SCI) are rehospitalized every year due to secondary health complications. One of the more common post-SCI health conditions is Autonomic Dysreflexia (AD). Key physiological indicators in the detection of AD are paroxysmal increase of blood pressure and sweating above the spinal cord injury level. In this paper we developed a system to measure galvanic skin resistance and use it to study the changes in skin perspiration and pulse in nine individuals with cervical SCIs while they were performing activities of daily living (ADL). A significantly lower skin resistance was detected above the injury site compared to areas below the injury site. As the subjects performed activities of different exertion levels, there was a significant decrease in the skin resistance above the injury site. Additionally, as anxiety levels increased during activities, skin resistance decreased. The application of skin resistance sensors has been shown to be a reliable detection method of naturally-occurring anomalous variations in the skin resistance among quadriplegics due to SCI in order to identify the onset of AD during typical ADL. A possible implication of this study is to provide long-term physiological monitoring of quadriplegics to alert them and their caregivers of the occurrence of AD.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the Indiana Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Fund through the Indiana State Department of Health (awarded to B.S.D.). We would like to thank Dr. James Malec and Dr. Elena Gillespie from the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana for all their help and support in this study. We are grateful to the subjects that have participated in the study. We would also like to thank the Purdue Discovery Park for making this research possible and Dr. Thomas Kuczek and Evidence Matangi from the Purdue Department of Statistics for their advice on the statistical analysis of the data presented in this paper. We would also like to thank Microsoft Research and Dr. Arjmand Samuel for the use of their technologies during the conduct of this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Shruthi Suresh & Bradley Duerstock

  2. School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Han Duerstock & Bradley Duerstock

  3. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Han Duerstock

Authors
  1. Shruthi Suresh
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  2. Han Duerstock
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  3. Bradley Duerstock
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Correspondence to Shruthi Suresh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Automation,Bldg.1004, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiaolong Zheng

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Daniel Dajun Zeng

  3. University of Arizona, Phoenix, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

  4. Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, USA

    Scott J. Leischow

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Suresh, S., Duerstock, H., Duerstock, B. (2016). Skin Resistance as a Physiological Indicator for Quadriplegics with Spinal Cord Injuries During Activities of Daily Living. In: Zheng, X., Zeng, D., Chen, H., Leischow, S. (eds) Smart Health. ICSH 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9545. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29175-8_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29175-8_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-29174-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-29175-8

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