Validation of the Innocor Device for Noninvasive Measurement of Oxygen Consumption in Children and Adults

Outpatient measurements of oxygen consumption (VO₂) and cardiac output (CO) are valuable in the management of pediatric cardiac disease. Current methods are inaccurate and cumbersome or require invasive procedures. New devices to measure these variables in adults have not been rigorously tested for children. The Innocor system uses a photoacoustic analyzer to measure gas content for noninvasive measurement of VO₂ and CO. This study sought to validate Innocor-derived VO₂ measurements in children and adults by comparing them against the gold standard Douglas bag method. Subjects were tested in an outpatient setting. Adaptations were made for pediatric patients based on weight. Resting VO₂ measurements were obtained simultaneously by the Innocor system and Douglas bag during 3 min. The study enrolled 31 children (mean age, 12.2 years; range, 7–17 years, 17 girls) and 29 adults (mean age, 36.7 years; range, 19–57 years; 17 women). Strong correlation between the two techniques was seen for both the adults (R ² = 0.88) and the children (R ² = 0.82). The average discrepancy between the Innocor and Douglas bag measurements was 1.7 % (range, 0.6–19.1 %) for the adults, and 5.4 % (range, 0.1–32.2 %) for the children. The discrepancy was more than 15 % for 17 % of the adults and 22 % of the children, with the Innocor device tending to overestimate VO₂ in children compared with the Douglas bag. This trend was not seen in adults. The Innocor system has excellent correlation with the Douglas bag and shows promise for noninvasive measurement of VO₂ and CO in the school-age pediatric population.