The pulse oximetry plethysmographic signal resembles the peripheral arterial pressure waveform, and the degree of respiratory variation in the pulse oximetry wave is close to the degree of respiratory arterial pulse pressure variation. Thus, it is tempting to speculate that pulse oximetry can be used to assess preload responsiveness in mechanically ventilated patients. In this commentary we bri...

RATIONALE At-home nocturnal pulse oximetry has a high positive predictive value (PPV) for polysomnographically-diagnosed obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) but no studies have been published testing the night-to-night consistency of at-home nocturnal pulse oximetry for the evaluation of suspected OSA in children. We therefore determined the night-to-night consistency of nocturnal pulse oximetry as a...

The principal advantage of optical sensors for medical applications is their intrinsic safety since there is no electrical contact between the patient and the equipment. (An added bonus is that they are also less suspect to electromagnetic interference). This has given rise to a variety of optical techniques to monitor physiological parameters: for example, the technique of Laser Doppler veloci...

OBJECTIVE For children with cyanotic congenital heart disease or acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, providers frequently make decisions based on pulse oximetry, in the absence of an arterial blood gas. The study objective was to measure the accuracy of pulse oximetry in the saturations from pulse oximetry (SpO2) range of 65% to 97%. METHODS This institutional review board-approved prospecti...

BACKGROUND The British Thoracic Society report on the diagnosis and treatment of the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome (SAHS) suggests that, if the pulse oximetry baseline oxygen saturation is above 90%, then 15 4% oxygen desaturation/hour in bed will diagnose SAHS requiring treatment. The diagnostic outcome of applying these guidelines has been studied. METHODS One hundred patients referred to...

INTRODUCTION Pulse oximetry is a useful tool for clinical and investigational purposes for indirect measurements of oxygen saturation [1-3]. Measurement of oxygen saturation with pulse oximetry (SpO2) can be used for evaluation and control of hypoxemia in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). As pulse oximetry is a non–invasive device, it can be used instead of arterial blood gases (ABG...

PURPOSE To determine the utility of pulse oximetry as a routine fifth vital sign in acute pediatric assessment. DESIGN Prospective study using pulse oximetry to measure oxygen saturation in children presenting to emergency department triage. Saturation values were disclosed to clinicians only after they had completed medical evaluations and were ready to discharge or admit each child. We meas...

The introduction of the OxiMax® Pulse Oximetry System brought Nellcor’s fifth-generation pulse oximetry technology to market and marked a fundamental shift in one of the design tenets of pulse oximeters. In the first four generations of Nellcor® pulse oximetry, beginning with the N-100 Pulse Oximeter introduced in the early 1980s, we focused attention on the hardware and software algorithms tha...