School of Energy and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Technology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3DJ, UK.
Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Babylon, Hillah 51001, Iraq.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Nov 22;22(23):9038. doi: 10.3390/s22239038.
Intensive care units (ICUs) are busy and noisy areas where patients and professional staff can be exposed to acoustic noise for long periods of time. In many cases, noise levels significantly exceed the levels recommended by the official health organisations. This situation can affect not only patient recovery but also professional staff, making ICUs unhealthy work and treatment environments. To introduce the measures and reduce the acoustic noise in the ICU, acoustic noise levels should first be measured and then appropriately analysed. However, in most studies dealing with this problem, measurements have been performed manually over short periods, leading to limited data being collected. They are usually followed by insufficient analysis, which in turn results in inadequate measures and noise reduction. This paper reviews recent works dealing with the problem of excessively high noise levels in ICUs and proposes a more thorough analysis of measured data both in the time and frequency domains. Applied frequency domain analysis identifies the cyclic behaviour of the measured sound pressure levels (SPLs) and detects the dominant frequency components in the SPL time series. Moreover, statistical analyses are produced to depict the patterns and SPLs to which patients in ICUs are typically exposed during their stay in the ICU. It has been shown that the acoustic environment is very similar every night, while it can vary significantly during the day or evening periods. However, during most of the observed time, recorded SPLs were significantly above the prescribed values, indicating an urgent need for their control and reduction. To effectively tackle this problem, more detailed information about the nature of noise during each of the analysed periods of the day is needed. This issue will be addressed in the continuation of this project.
重症监护病房（ICU）是繁忙且嘈杂的区域，患者和专业医护人员可能会长期暴露在噪声环境中。在许多情况下，噪声水平显著超过了官方卫生组织推荐的水平。这种情况不仅会影响患者的康复，还会影响医护人员，使 ICU 成为不健康的工作和治疗环境。为了引入措施并降低 ICU 中的声级，首先应测量声级，然后进行适当的分析。然而，在大多数涉及这个问题的研究中，测量都是在短时间内手动进行的，导致收集的数据有限。随后的分析通常不够充分，从而导致措施和降噪不足。本文回顾了最近处理 ICU 中过高噪声水平问题的研究工作，并提出了对测量数据进行更彻底的时间和频率域分析。应用频域分析可以识别测量声压级（SPL）的周期性行为，并检测 SPL 时间序列中的主要频率分量。此外，还进行了统计分析，以描绘 ICU 患者在 ICU 住院期间通常暴露的模式和 SPL。结果表明，声学环境每晚都非常相似，而在白天或晚上期间则可能有很大差异。然而，在观察到的大部分时间内，记录的 SPL 明显高于规定值，表明急需对其进行控制和降低。为了有效解决这个问题，需要了解每天分析时段内噪声的性质的更详细信息。这个问题将在该项目的后续部分中解决。
