P132 CONTINUOUS MEASUREMENTS OF CENTRAL BLOOD PRESSURE DURING MENTAL STRESS MONITORING

Abstract

Nowadays employment world is increasingly shifting towards service-related labour, changing focus from physiological to psychological loads for workers. Thus, a deeper psychological stress understanding arises, not only for jobs within extreme conditions (as astronauts or pilots) but also for regular jobs with high emphasis on mental stressors. With the intend of developing a method and technology able to detect psychological stress we perform this pilot laboratory study in 14 male volunteers under stress and relax situations. As a stressor and the relaxer were used a standardized cognitive Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and a relaxing video, respectively. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Heart Rate (HR) were continuously measured as golden standard techniques to indicate physiological stress levels. Before each stimulus intervention a Braquial Blood Pressure were measured by standard Omron M6 apparatus. A continuous monitoring of Central Aortic Pressure (CAP) were assessed by non-invasive small WiFi sensors and equipment, developed by NMT, S.A., which allowed on-line detection and long-term effect of stress evaluation.HR and GSR measurements showed high variations under stressor application, proving physiological stress among volunteers and validating PASAT suitability. From analysis of obtained CAP data were found the good correlation with HR and GSR measurements in both, stress and relax sections. In addition of being a highly innovative study on mental stress detection, it is obvious the necessity of increase study population in future similar studies in lab and/or in the field condition.