Statistical analysis of neuromuscular blockade response: contributions to an automatic controller calibration

Abstract

Muscle relaxant drugs are currently given during surgical operations. The design of controllers for the automatic control of neuromuscular blockade benefits from an individual tuning of the controller to the characteristics of the patient. A novel approach to the characterization of the neuromuscular blockade response induced by an initial bolus at the beginning of anaesthesia is proposed. This approach is based on the statistical analysis of the data using principal components and Walsh-Fourier spectral analysis. These methods provide information about the patients dynamics, allowing the on-line autocalibration of the controller, using multiple linear regression techniques. Observed and simulated data are used to compare different approaches to the characterization of the bolus response.