Why might I need pulse oximetry?

Pulse oximetry may be used to see if there is enough oxygen in the blood. This information is needed
in many kinds of situations. It may be used:

1. During or after surgery or procedures that use sedation

2. To see how well lung medicines are working

3. To check a person’s ability to handle increased activity levels

4. To see if a ventilator is needed to help with breathing, or to see how well it’s working

5. To check a person has moments when breathing stops during sleep (sleep apnea)

Pulse oximetry is also used to check the health of a person with any condition that affects blood
oxygen levels, such as:

1. Heart attack
 2. Heart failure

3. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

4. Anemia

5. Lung cancer

6. Asthma

7. Pneumonia

Your healthcare provider may have other reasons to advise pulse oximetry.

What are the risks of pulse oximetry?

All procedures have some risks. The risks of this procedure may include:

1. Incorrect reading if the probe falls off the earlobe, toe, or finger

2. Skin irritation from adhesive on the probe

Your risks may vary depending on your general health and other factors. Ask your healthcare
provider which risks apply most to you. Talk with him or her about any concerns you have.

Pulse oximetry is a noninvasive method for monitoring a person's oxygen saturation (SO2). Though its
reading of SpO2 (peripheral oxygen saturation) is not always identical to the more desirable reading
of SaO2 (arterial oxygen saturation) from arterial blood gas analysis, the two are correlated well
enough that the safe, convenient, noninvasive, inexpensive pulse oximetry method is valuable for
measuring oxygen saturation in clinical use.

In its most common (transmissive) application mode, a sensor device is placed on a thin part of the
patient's body, usually a fingertip or earlobe, or in the case of an infant, across a foot. The device
passes two wavelengths of light through the body part to a photodetector. It measures the changing
absorbance at each of the wavelengths, allowing it to determine the absorbances due to the pulsing
arterial blood alone, excluding venous blood, skin, bone, muscle, fat, and (in most cases) nail polish.[1]

Less commonly, reflectance pulse oximetry is used as an alternative to transmissive pulse oximetery
described above. This method does not require a thin section of the person's body and is therefore
well suited to a universal application such as the feet, forehead, and chest, but it also has some
limitations. Vasodilation and pooling of venous blood in the head due to compromised venous return
to the heart can cause a combination of arterial and venous pulsations in the forehead region and lead
to spurious SpO2 results. Such conditions occur while undergoing anesthesia with endotracheal
intubation and mechanical ventilation or in patients in the Trendelenburg position.