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Drummond GB, Fischer D, Arvind DK. Current clinical methods of measurement of respiratory rate give imprecise values. ERJ Open Res. 2020;6(3)doi: 10.1183/23120541.00023-2020.
Drummond, G. B., Fischer, D., & Arvind, D. K. (2020). Current clinical methods of measurement of respiratory rate give imprecise values. ERJ open research, 6(3), . https://doi.org/10.1183/23120541.00023-2020
Drummond, Gordon B, et al. "Current clinical methods of measurement of respiratory rate give imprecise values." ERJ open research vol. 6,3 (2020). doi: https://doi.org/10.1183/23120541.00023-2020
Drummond GB, Fischer D, Arvind DK. Current clinical methods of measurement of respiratory rate give imprecise values. ERJ Open Res. 2020 Sep 28;6(3). doi: 10.1183/23120541.00023-2020. eCollection 2020 Jul. PMID: 33015146; PMCID: PMC7520170.
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ERJ Open Res. 2020 Sep 28;6(3). doi: 10.1183/23120541.00023-2020. eCollection 2020 Jul.

Current clinical methods of measurement of respiratory rate give imprecise values.

ERJ open research

Gordon B Drummond, Darius Fischer, D K Arvind

Affiliations

  1. Dept of Anaesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh UK.
  2. Centre for Speckled Computing, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

PMID: 33015146 PMCID: PMC7520170 DOI: 10.1183/23120541.00023-2020

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Respiratory rate is a basic clinical measurement used for illness assessment. Errors in measuring respiratory rate are attributed to observer and equipment problems. Previous studies commonly report rate differences ranging from 2 to 6 breaths·min

METHODS: To study why repeated observations should vary so much, we conducted a virtual experiment, using continuous recordings of breathing from acutely ill patients. These records allowed each breathing cycle to be precisely timed. We made repeated random measures of respiratory rate using different sample durations of 30, 60 and 120 s. We express the variation in these repeated rate measurements for the different sample durations as the interquartile range of the values obtained for each subject. We predicted what values would be found if a single measure, taken from any patient, were repeated and inspected boundary values of 12, 20 or 25 breaths·min

RESULTS: When the sample duration was nominally 30 s, the mean interquartile range of repeated estimates was 3.4 breaths·min

CONCLUSIONS: Early warning scores will be unreliable when short sample durations are used to measure respiratory rate. Precision improves with longer sample duration, but this may be impractical unless better measurement methods are used.

Copyright ©ERS 2020.

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: G.B. Drummond reports a grant from the Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation for a previous study, not this one. Conflict of interest: D. Fischer has nothing to disclose. Conf

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