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Oximetry Monitoring and Patient Motion

June 20, 2019

As a clinical professional, you need to know when patient conditions change. Pulse oximeters provide valuable patient status information, but their measurements can be distorted by factors such as involuntary motion.

Patients shiver for a lot of reasons: hypothermia, pain, anxiety, fear, stress, fever, low blood sugar, tremor, sepsis, even excitement. One study, published in late 2017, compared pulse oximeters from two leading manufacturers in use with patients with postanesthetic shivering.

Researchers took note of failed readings, called dropouts, and their duration. The pulse oximeter from a competing brand had 17 dropouts during the test period, averaging more than 12 seconds each. The Nonin pulse oximeter used in the same test had fewer than half as many dropouts, and those were less than half as long.

Featured in the Study:

Onyx Vantage 9590

Shiver Infographic, patient motion, nonin, competitor, dropout time, count on nonin