Health Discuss

My lover went to the infirmary today and they put one of these on her finger. We cant seem to figure out why?

it measures your pulse

It's a beat ox. It gives a semi faithful beat count. Doing it by 2 fingers as well is important. The two should be compared. Also bad circulation, and false nails do not give an faithful account of the pulse.

paramedic girl is right, its titled a pulsox, but it does more than pulse, it measures the gas content of the blood, thusly the need for the flushed light, which bounces soured the blood cells of the aforementioned color and can measure gas saturation in the blood.

pulse

It's called a Pulse-Oximeter. It actually is shining two lights through the finger- one circumpolar red, the other infra-red. The device is comparing the apportion absorption v.s. transmission of apiece light-source. To be considered an accurate reading the patients pulse must be within 2 beats of that displayed on the machine. Many things can cause simulated readings- - Nail polish, especialy blue-greens - Cold - Carbon Monoxide poisoning - Methemoglobinemia - Anemia - Blood loss (trauma) Also the Oximeter only measures the proportionality of flushed murder cells that are transporting oxygen in a normal patient, not how such oxygen is existence transported or if it's existence off-loaded at the cells. For example if a trauma patient is "satting" at 98% most people would adopt that they patient is doing well, but may change to actualise that the patient is actually in distress since they are missing 25% of their murder volume, so that 98% is more like 75% of normal. For more see- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximeter http://www.oximetry.org/pulseox/principles.htm - David