Isn’t it amazing how one finger can tell you how well your heart is pumping oxygen through your body. According to Healthline a digital finger pulse oxygen reader may be used to monitor the health of individuals with any type of condition that can affect blood oxygen levels. The good thing is that with portable ones, this doesn’t only have to be monitored in a hospital anymore. You can now measure these blood oxygen levels at home or anywhere.
There are many conditions that can benefit from this type of reader. People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, pneumonia, lung cancer, anemia, heart attack or heart failure and congenital heart defects. According to Healthline an online publication, there are also some common use cases for pulse oximetry. It can be used to assess how well a new lung medication is working. It can also be used to evaluate whether someone needs help breathing or to evaluate how helpful a ventilator is. Many times, after a surgical procedure sedation is required so monitoring oxygen levels during or after the surgery is important if sedation is required. For some it may be important to determine someone’s ability to tolerate increased physical activity. Another common one according to Healthline is to evaluate whether someone momentarily stops breathing while sleeping, like in cases of sleep apnea during a sleep study.
So the big question is, HOW?…How can one finger tell us that our hearts are pumping oxygen well enough to withstand whichever medical issues we are experiencing. For lack of a better way of saying it, I’ll just say it’s easy and painless. According to Healthline, during a pulse oximetry reading a small clamp device is placed on a finger…but not just a finger. It can also be placed on an earlobe or toe. From here small beams of light pass through the blood in the finger, measuring the amount of oxygen. It does this by measuring changes of light absorption in oxygenated or deoxygenated blood. This is a painless process. The pulse oximeter will then be able to tell you your oxygen saturation levels along with your heart rate. Can we just stop for a moment and give a salute to technology? We have come such a long way. Due to all of the advancements up until this point and moving forward we can depend on suppliers like CFS Medical Equipment and Supplies to help us stay healthy and live with peace of mind. If you experience the above mentioned ailments, keep the reader in your pocket and keep taking care of yourself, you deserve to know what’s going on with your health and any moment of the day.
D.C. Beckner