High-Tech T-Shirt Tracks Patients’ Vitals, Potentially Shortening Hospital Stays
By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay Reporter
MARCH 25, 2025 — A high-tech T-shirt packed with sensors could revolutionize post-surgical care, allowing doctors to monitor patients’ vital signs remotely and potentially shorten hospital stays, according to new research.
Dr. Antonio Pastore, an associate professor of urology at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, and his team developed a special T-shirt equipped with sensors to monitor various vital signs. “Our 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,” Pastore stated in a press release.
The shirt continuously tracks important health data. It monitors heart electrical activity, respiration, heart rate, body temperature, and more. This data is then transmitted to an app and accessible through web-based software.
“The T-shirt we gave to patients differs from smartwatches and other wearables,” Dr. Pastore explained. “It can reveal more data, including electrolytes, which we need to continue to monitor after bladder surgery as they can reveal mineral imbalances that lead to serious complications.”
The study compared two groups of patients who underwent robot-assisted urological surgery. One group of 35 patients was given the T-shirt to wear, while another group received standard post-operative care.
Patients in the standard care group were typically discharged from the hospital three to five days after surgery. In contrast, patients wearing the T-shirt were discharged a day to a day and a half earlier, wearing the device for three-hour periods daily for about two weeks.
Results showed a significant difference in readmission rates. Roughly 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.
Furthermore, the T-shirt detected early signs of heart problems in five patients. This allowed for 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,” Pastore said.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the European Association of Urology in Madrid.
Dr. Maarten Albersen, a urologist at UZ Leuven in Belgium and the EAU meeting chair, noted that the sensory T-shirt appears to be a promising remote monitoring technology for post-surgical care. “The trial is early stage, but the insights are very interesting, particularly since patients strongly accepted the wearable and it was able to detect complications in real-time and reduce unnecessary rehospitalizations,” he remarked in a news release.
However, Albersen cautioned that more research is needed. “Given the small size and preliminary nature of the trial, before we can see this sort of wearable in clinical practice more data is needed on its ability to support earlier discharge from hospital, and its true impact on outcomes and cost-effectiveness.”
For more information, see:
- UCLA has more on wearable health technology.
SOURCE: European Association of Urology, news release, March 21, 2025
