Monitoring of body fluid in patients with chronic heart failure using Bioimpedance-Spectroscopy

Abstract

Patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) often suffer from the formation of edema within their body. To monitor the appearance of such edema in lung and limbs as early as possible would improve the medical treatment fundamentally. Bioimpedance-Spectroscopy is a non-invasive, easy-to-implement measurement method that allows determining the water content of a patient. However, stable long term measurements are difficult to perform and so the optimal measurement conditions have to be defined precisely. In the past, a lot of work was focused on the development of the optimal measurement setup that allows stable and reproducible long-term monitoring of edema. Based on these investigations, a measurement protocol was developed and within this study, case reports shall be presented in which five patients suffering from acutely decompensated CHF were monitored during their complete medical treatment in the clinic. Every day, the whole body- and thoracic impedance were measured to monitor the progress of edema in the limbs and lung, respectively. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.