An apparatus for monitoring the presence of secretions in an artificial respiratory system comprises at least one sensing element (20) to detect waves generated by said secretions and output a main signal (50), representative of at least one main parameter characteristic of the waves; a first processing block (30) connected downstream of said first sensing element (20), is set to input the main signal (50) and to generate a corresponding main output alarm signal (51), in the case in which the main parameter has a greater value than a predetermined threshold value.