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- Krystle Gaco
- Patrick Fenningham
- Phuong DiepLam

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Problems Statement

The purpose of this website is to explore a device called the pulse oximeter. The pulse oximeter is a device that measures the oxygen saturation level of a patient’s blood. The history and development of the device, current research being conducted, problems with the device, and clinical studies using the pulse oximeter will be explored.

Figure 1: Two ways blood saturation level is measured.
Blood saturation is obtained by shining two wavelengths of light at the fingertip.
<http://www.pulmolink.co.uk/media/images/how_does_pulse_oximetry_work.gif>

Introduction

The pulse oximetry was first developed half a century ago. Oximeters only became extremely popular with the use of digital technology. Pulse oximeters were released to the public in September of 1981 (Lawrence). One draw back was that it was originally only for companies or hospitals dealing with critical care. Gradually, they became geared to the general public population. A present day pulse oximeter provides a fairly inexpensive way to monitor a patients respiratory function in a vast amount of areas. These fairly simply and extremely reliable devices can be found in hospitals and throughout our communities. Pulse oximeters allow their patients to breathe easier by measuring the oxygen saturation of arterial blood in their bodies.

Figure 2: SOLAR® MASIMO SET® Pulse Oximetry Module
A solar version of the pulse oximeter monitoring device.
<http://www.gehealthcare.com/inen/monitor/images/prod/masimo2.gif>

In an average human being, serious respiratory failure occurs when arterial saturation of hemoglobin falls below 90%, this percentage usually ranges between 85-90% (Martin). For many years, this has been an unnoticed problem. The only way of previously detecting hypoxia was by a condition called cyanosis. Cyanosis is a bluish shade of the skin and mucous membranes (Cote). In the past, cyanosis has been used to detect hypoxia (Lawrence). However, cyanosis does not appear until saturation falls to roughly 75%, which is the normal saturation of venous blood (Martin). Doctors and nurses alike feel that it was extremely critical to find this problem before it fell below 75%. Their only way of testing this was by randomly assuming the saturation of hemoglobin is below 90% (Martin). This is a huge reason why pulse oximeters are extremely important, they replace those assumptions with clinical evidence. The average person that uses a pulse oximeter is roughly fifty years of age (Cote).

A video short video showing how the pulse oximeter is used
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=TcVFNoVez0k>

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Pulse Oximeter

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Welcome

Problems Statement

Introduction