High-Tech T-Shirt Monitors Patients’ Vital Signs After Surgery
TUESDAY, March 25, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Researchers have found that a high-tech T-shirt packed with sensors can effectively track patients’ vital signs after they are discharged from the hospital. This technology could potentially enable patients to return home sooner to recover.
The findings come from a small group of patients who wore the sensor-filled garment after undergoing urological surgery for cancer. Dr. Antonio Pastore, an associate professor of urology at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy and lead researcher, noted in a news release that the 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.”
For the study, researchers designed a lightweight T-shirt equipped with sensors that monitor various vital signs, including heart electrical activity, respiration, body temperature, and heart rate. The shirt transmits the data to an app and web-based software.
Dr. Pastore explained that the T-shirt provides more comprehensive data than smartwatches or other wearables, specifically including electrolytes, which are critical to monitor post-surgery to “reveal mineral imbalances that lead to serious complications.”
Researchers compared two groups of patients: 35 who wore the T-shirt following robot-assisted urological surgery and 35 who received standard care. Patients in the standard care group were discharged from the hospital three to five days after surgery. In contrast, the T-shirt group was discharged a day to a day and a half earlier and asked to wear the telemonitoring garment in three-hour windows daily for about two weeks.
The results showed that about 26% of patients in the standard care group needed to return to the hospital before their scheduled follow-up, compared to only 6% in the T-shirt group. The T-shirt also detected the onset of heart problems in five patients, enabling prompt diagnosis and treatment.
“In Italy, where standard discharge time after this type of robotic-assisted urological surgery can be at least 72 hours, 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,” Dr. Pastore said.
Dr. Maarten Albersen, a urologist at UZ Leuven in Belgium and EAU meeting chair, said, “This sensory T-shirt appears to be a promising remote monitoring technology for helping patients to recover well at home after robotic-assisted urological surgery.”
However, Dr. Albersen also cautioned that further research is needed to assess “its ability to support earlier discharge from hospital, and its true impact on outcomes and cost-effectiveness.” The researchers presented their findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the European Association of Urology in Madrid. It’s important to note that findings presented at medical meetings are considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
What This Means For You
Patients might be able to leave the hospital earlier if a wearable garment like a T-shirt can feed doctors data on their vital signs.
