A sensory t-shirt that monitors a patient’s vital signs after cancer surgery could help them leave the hospital sooner to recover at home.
The garment is worn for around two weeks under clothes three times each day—and patients felt more reassured than a control group in a pilot study involving 70 people.
A team from Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, wanted to see if patients could be discharged earlier than the normal timeframe following urological surgery for cancer.
Professor Antonio Pastore and his colleagues worked with LET Webearable Solutions, a company specializing in tele-monitoring, to design a light t-shirt with sensors that track ECG, heart rate, body temperature, and more—then sends the data to an app and web-based software.
In a control group, patients were discharged as normal, three to five days after surgery, but the ‘wearable’ group were discharged 24 to 36 hours earlier, two to four days after surgery, with the t-shirt monitoring vital parameters, including blood pressure, pulse rate, saturation, and blood glucose.
The wearable group were fully briefed on how the device worked and were asked to wear it from 7–10am, 2–5pm, and 7–10pm.
“The t-shirt we gave to patients differs from smartwatches and other wearables,” explained Prof. Pastore. “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.”
In the control group, eight patients (26%) went back to the hospital before their scheduled follow-up, compared with only two patients (6%) in the wearable group.
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Additionally, the t-shirt detected the onset of cardiological conditions in five patients, allowing for early diagnosis and treatment.
The overall satisfaction rate among patients in the group was 90%—with an average monitoring period of nearly 14 days.
“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,” said Prof. Pastore.
“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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The findings are due to be presented this weekend at the European Association of Urology Congress in Madrid, Spain. The Association’s Scientific Chair Professor Maarten Albersen welcomed the study.
“The trial is early stage, but the insights are very interesting,” said Prof. Albersen, a urologist at UZ Leuven Hospital in Belgium. “Particularly since patients strongly accepted the wearable and it was able to detect complications in real-time and reduce unnecessary re-hospitalizations.”
A study into the cost-effectiveness of the technology is currently underway.
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