The device enabled patients who had undergone urological surgery for cancer feel safer and more reassured than a control group in a pilot study of 70 individuals.
The results will be presented this weekend (March 22-23, 2025) at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Madrid.
Telemedicine allows patients and clinicians to maintain contact remotely so that care, interventions and monitoring can continue from the patient’s home.
Antonio L Pastore, Associate Professor of Urology, Sapienza University of Rome, and colleagues wanted to see if their patients could be discharged earlier than is currently standard, following robot-assisted urological surgery for cancer.
The team worked with LET's Webearable Solutions, an Italian SME specialising in telemonitoring, and designed a light t-shirt with sensors that monitor ECG, respiratory and heart rate, body temperature and more. The wearable technology sends data to an app and web-based software.
In a control group, patients were discharged as normal, three to five days after surgery. In the ‘wearable’ group they were discharged 24–36 hours earlier, two to four days after surgery, with the t-shirt, which also monitors vital signs including saturation and blood glucose. The wearable group were briefed on how the device worked and asked to wear it daily for around two weeks between 7–10 am, 2–5 pm, and 7–10 pm.
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In a statement, Pastore said: “The t-shirt we gave to patients differs from smartwatches and other wearables. 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.”
In the control group, eight patients accessed the hospital before their scheduled follow-up compared with two patients in the wearable group. Monitoring by the t-shirt also detected the onset of cardiological conditions in five patients, allowing for early diagnosis and treatment.
The average remote monitoring period was 13.5 days, and the overall satisfaction rate among patients in this group was 90 per cent. Ten per cent had trouble understanding the telemedicine-based instructions, but 87 per cent found it effective and encouraging.
Pastore said: “Our patients found the t-shirt easy to use and over 90 per cent reported it allowed them to feel safe and cared for while recuperating at home. 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.”
Commenting on the study, Professor Maarten Albersen, Urologist at UZ Leuven, Belgium, and EAU Scientific Congress Office Chair, said, “This sensory t-shirt appears to be a promising remote monitoring technology for helping patients to recover well at home after robotic-assisted urological surgery. 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 rehospitalisations.”
Professor Albersen added that more data is needed on the t-shirt’s ability to support earlier discharge from hospital and its impact on outcomes and cost-effectiveness
The team is now conducting a study into the cost-effectiveness of the technology.
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