Graphene-based electrodes for ECG signal monitoring: Fabrication methodologies, challenges and future directions

AbstractElectrocardiogram (ECG) is the most common and simple technique to diagnose cardiovascular diseases. Cardiovascular diseases can be detected effectively if ECG signals are monitored for a long time, producing innovative clinical outcomes to diagnose and treat cardiovascular diseases. Due to skin irritation and degradation of signal quality with time, traditional wet electrodes are unsuitable for long-term ECG monitoring. Researchers are trying to fabricate flexible, wearable, highly conductive and lightweight ECG sensors, which can be applied for long-term monitoring of ECG signals and the detection of several cardiovascular diseases. Graphene is used for fabricating dry ECG electrodes because it exhibits robust mechanical flexibility, good environmental stability and excellent carrier mobility. This review paper presents the progress of various fabrication methods to make graphene-based ECG electrodes and provides the researcher’s clarification on recent advancements and direction in this domain. This paper focuses on a systematic review and comparative study of various fabrication methods of graphene-based ECG electrodes, such as screen printing, dip coating, drop casting, wet transfer, electrospinning, wet transfer and dry patterning, spin coating, spray coating, ink-jet printing etc

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN