Pneumacare SLP Validation in Infants and in Clinical Bronchiolitis: Validation of Structured Light Plethysmography (SLP) in Healthy Infants and in Infants With Clinical Bronchiolitis

Viral illness, particularly chest infection causing breathing difficulty in infants and children is the commonest reason for admission to hospital. At present, there are no objective measurements of the degree of breathing difficulty.

This is because current objective tests of breathing difficulty requires the patient to cooperate and actively perform the tests. This is not possible in babies and very challenging in young children. SLP is a noncontact, effort independent technique for measuring the rate of breathing, the amount of chest expansion and the relative contribution of chest and abdomen to the work of breathing. Measuring these parameters which are known to vary with increasing breathing difficulty will allow us to make objective assessments of breathing difficulty. This study proposes to validate this technique in babies aged 02 years who are healthy and in babies with clinical viral bronchiolitis. The Investigators intend to demonstrate that the technique is feasible in this young age group and that the investigators will be able to demonstrate clinically valid differences between normal and ill babies and also demonstrate measurable differences with the evolution of the clinical illness.