[Home cardio-respiratory monitoring with alarm record system in infants at risk of life-threatening events].

In few infants, home monitoring is useful to prevent recurrent apparently life-threatening events. Some devices have an alarm record system. We report our experience of home monitoring with such a device in 22 infants. 43.3% of the recorded events were considered as false alarms and 56.7% as true alarms. Among the alarms relative to abnormal respiratory events (38%), more than half occurred after two min of very low impedance thoracic signal. Among the true alarms relative to cardiac abnormalities (18.7%) more than half occurred during high amplitude fluctuations of the thoracic impedance signal and were relative to obstructive apnea or hypertonic vagal reactivity. Three infants presented an apparent life threatening event during an alarm, and two of them were hospitalized. These results indicate that it is important to define precisely the significance of the alarms during the survey of home monitoring of infants at risk for sudden infant death.