YSU respiratory-care students to present research

Staff report

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Two Youngstown State University students are presenting their research at an international respiratory-care conference in December in Las Vegas.

Dana Strollo and Lauren Furnkase, both seniors studying respiratory care, will be among professionals, physicians and Ph.Ds in the field from all over the world at the 56th American Association for Respiratory Care International Respiratory Congress.

The YSU students are participating in the four-day conference’s Open Forum symposium to discuss “Effect of Signal Loss on Respiratory Rate Recording with a Clinical Oxygen Dose Recorder.” The presentation details their analysis on patient oxygen needs during pulmonary rehabilitation.

Strollo and Furnkase’s study is an extension of faculty research conducted by Teresa Volsko, director of the YSU Respiratory Care and Polysomnography programs and assistant professor of Health Professions; Kate Tessmer, assistant professor of Human Performance and Exercise Science; Rachael Pohle-Krauza, assistant professor of Human Ecology and Michele McCarroll, former assistant professor of Human Performance and Exercise Science.

The faculty members looked at oxygen levels of exercising pulmonary rehabilitation patients from St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown. Using the data collected, Strollo and Furnkase then performed laboratory work to study devices that could be used to capture a patient’s respiratory heart rate and blood-oxygen saturation level. This information can be used to determine the required oxygen levels of patients during rehabilitation.

Volsko, who acts as the students’ faculty adviser, called Strollo and Furnkase’s findings “highly significant.”

“They give respiratory therapists an idea of how to interpret the data obtained from this particular piece of monitoring equipment — the abstract outlines the reasons why clinicians can’t just take the raw values this device provides at face value,” Volsko said. “The abstract also provides information that is clinically relevant in the pulmonary rehabilitation setting. Therapists can use that information to make changes on how much oxygen they deliver to a patient during the pulmonary rehabilitation session.”

Volsko added that the study has “definite potential for development of a full manuscript.” The students plan to submit their work to the Journal of Respiratory Care.

YSU has one of leading respiratory-care programs in the country in terms of the number of students.