Journals Proceedings

Abstract

The objective is to design a microcontroller based pain management system which reduces the pain of the patients by giving analgesics epidurally, monitors the given parameters and activates alarms in case it identifies any deviation along with the type of alarm on the display. The epidural infusion involves injection of drugs through a catheter placed into the epidural space. This system allows the user to enter analgesia rate, time duration between two boluses, bolus volume and drug name through keypad. Although it provides continuous and intermittent type of infusion, intermittent bolus method is more effective than continuous infusion method. The basic requirement is to infuse analgesic drug of a selectable dosage in ml, after a fixed time gap in minutes and at a programmed analgesia rate of (say) 299 ml/ hr entered by the user, till the system is reset or an alarm condition gets activated. The mechanical assembly consists of peristaltic mechanism which is driven by a stepper motor. It gives information about infusion rate, drug name, elapsed time and infused volume at a glance to the doctors or nurses. It also has continuous monitoring of bio-signals like electrocardiogram and photoplethysmography signal. The bio-signal monitoring helps doctors to decide change in analgesia rate. These are the vital parameters that need to be monitored for personal healthcare. This system has applications in many fields of medicine like painless labour in obstetrics, oncology and orthopedics.