Telemedicine has revolutionized medical practice by enabling patients and healthcare providers to maintain communication remotely, ensuring that care, interventions, and monitoring can continue in the comfort of a patient’s home. Now, a new t-shirt designed to monitor a patient’s vital signs after urological cancer surgery could allow for earlier discharge from the hospital, promoting a quicker recovery at home. This wearable device, which patients wear for about two weeks under their clothes at three-hour intervals each day, was shown to make patients feel more secure and reassured than a control group in a pilot study involving 70 participants.

Researchers at Sapienza University of Rome (Rome, Italy) aimed to investigate whether patients could be discharged sooner than the current standard following robot-assisted urological cancer surgery. The research team developed a lightweight t-shirt embedded with sensors that track vital signs such as ECG, respiratory rate, heart rate, body temperature, and more. The wearable technology transmits data to both an app and web-based software. In the control group, patients were discharged three to five days post-surgery as usual. In contrast, the 'wearable' group was discharged 24–36 hours earlier, within two to four days, with the t-shirt continuously monitoring vital parameters like blood pressure, pulse rate, oxygen saturation, and blood glucose. The wearable group received full instructions on how the device operated and were asked to wear it during specific hours of the day: 7–10 am, 2–5 pm, and 7–10 pm.

In the control group, eight patients (26%) accessed the hospital before their scheduled follow-up, while only two patients (6%) in the wearable group required early intervention. The results, which were presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Madrid, revealed that the t-shirt's monitoring also helped detect the onset of cardiological issues in five patients, leading to timely diagnosis and treatment. The average remote monitoring period lasted 13.5 days, and the overall patient satisfaction in the wearable group was 90%. While 10% of patients struggled with the telemedicine-based instructions, 87% found the technology both effective and encouraging. The researchers are currently conducting a study to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this technology.

“The t-shirt we gave to patients differs from smartwatches and other wearables. It can reveal more data, including electrolytes, which we need to continue to monitor after bladder surgery as they can reveal mineral imbalances that lead to serious complications,” said researcher Antonio L Pastore, Associate Professor of Urology, Sapienza University of Rome. “Our patients found the t-shirt easy to use and over 90% reported it allowed them to feel safe and cared for while recuperating at home. In Italy, where standard discharge time after this type of robotic-assisted urological surgery can be at least 72 hours, being able to allow patients home sooner improves their quality of life as they feel more comfortable in their own environment, and it means we can free up hospital beds too.”

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