Neural interfaces to monitor Interventional Cardiologists' mental workload: GAME-ON SAGA

BACKGROUND: Interventional cardiologists' mental workload may impact on their performance as well as on patients' outcome. Nevertheless, little attention is paid to the monitoring and optimization of their mental status. Electroencepha-logram (EEG)-based neural-interfaces can estimate mental fatigue and sleepiness through spectral analysis techniques and the amplitude of alpha waves is a widely validated indicator of mental engagement's level.METHODS: The present study aims to describe mental fatigue and sleepiness through variation of psychometrics and neurometrics during a work shift in a population of 7 interventional cardiologists. Neurometrics have been acquired at the beginning of the shift, before and after each procedure performed during 127 valid Alpha Attenuation Protocols (AAP), a practical test to quantify sleepiness measuring alpha power during 2 cycle of eye opening/closing protocol. We collected alpha waves' power measures obtained during resting condition (AA Coefficient-eyes open [AAC-eo], AAC-eyes closed [AAC-ec] and AAC-mean), related to fatigue, and AAC-ec/AAC-eo (AAC-ratio), related to sleepiness.RESULTS: From a two-months observation, the first interesting preliminary results emerged: 1) AAC-mean showed an upward trend during the working day, reflecting an increase in mental fatigue (P=0.01); 2) population-level psychomet-rics trend confirms the same tendency described by neurometrics, possibly reflecting a reduced awareness of the operator of his/her actual mental status.CONCLUSIONS: Developing a low cost and high feasibility device to monitor and analyze operator's mental engage-ment level could be extremely appealing, considering the lack of data in literature for interventional disciplines and recent technology developments.