Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Jul 16, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 23, 2023
The Feasibility and Reliability of Upper Arm-Worn Apple Watch Heart Rate Monitoring for Surgeons during Surgery: An Observational Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
The well-being of physicians, particularly surgeons, has been largely ignored in the medical field despite their high levels of stress. Wrist-worn heart rate monitors have become more prevalent, but cannot be worn during surgery.
Objective:
This study aims to examine the feasibility of using an Apple Watch worn on the upper arm of a surgeon to collect heart rate data during surgery.
Methods:
This study used two identical Apple Watch Series 8 devices to monitor the heart rate of surgeons during robotic-assisted surgery. Heart rate data was collected from the wrist-worn and the upper arm-worn, and statistical analysis included calculating the mean difference and standard deviation of difference between the two devices, constructing Bland-Altman plots, assessing accuracy based on mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and calculating intraclass correlation coefficient. Demographic information and surgical data were also collected.
Results:
The MAE for the whole group and for subjects A, B, C and D were 3.63, 3.58, 2.70, 3.93 and 4.28, respectively, and the MAPE were 3.58%, 3.34%, 2.42%, 4.58% and 4.00%, respectively. Bland-Altman plots and scatter plots showed no systematic error when comparing the heart rate measurements obtained from the upper arm-worn and the wrist-worn Apple Watches. The ICC for subjects A, B, C and D were 0.559, 0.651, 0.508, 0.563 (P<.001).Following the previously mentioned limits, this can be interpreted as moderate reliability.
Conclusions:
This study suggests that the upper arm-worn is a viable alternative site for monitoring heart rate during surgery using an Apple Watch. The agreement and reliability between the measurements obtained from the upper arm-worn and the wrist-worn were good, with no systematic error and a high level of accuracy. The findings of this study have important implications for improving data collection and management of the physical and mental demands of surgeons during surgery, where wearing a watch on the wrist is not feasible. Clinical Trial: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Gunma Prefectural Cancer Center (IRB number 405-04030).
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.