Intelligibility of Sonifications for Respiratory Monitoring in Anesthesia

Three experiments explored the effectiveness of continuous auditory displays, or "sonifications", for conveying information about an anesthetized patient's respiratory state. Experiment 1 established aneffective respiratory sonification. Experiment 2 showed an effect of expertise in using respiratory sonfication and revealed that some apparent differences in sonification effectiveness could be accounted for by response bias. Experiment 3 showed that sonification helps anesthetists maintain high levels of awareness of patient state and at the same time perform other tasks more effectively than when relying upon visual monitoring of patient state. In summary, sonification of patient physiology beyond traditional pulse oximetry appears a viable and useful adjunct when monitoring patient state.