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ISOSerenity

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Hi. I've been a lurker here for awhile. Finally had something occur that got me to register!! I had a situation come up this evening on a call that puzzled me and I haven't been able to find an answer to. I'm not technically 'new' to the field, but don't have a whole lot of experience per our very rural area. It's probably a ridiculous question, but here it is nonetheless. Can you obtain a pulse oximeter reading >100? We had a call this evening for an individual c/o a racing heart. HR was running between 116-124. Several times I thought I saw the pulse ox read in excess of 100. Then I began to wonder if I was reading the numbers upside down but not correlating the correct reading with the correct measurement, ie pulse & O2 sat.
 
Have never seen a SPO2 machine that will read above 100%.
 
ISOSerenity said:
Hi. I've been a lurker here for awhile. Finally had something occur that got me to register!! I had a situation come up this evening on a call that puzzled me and I haven't been able to find an answer to. I'm not technically 'new' to the field, but don't have a whole lot of experience per our very rural area. It's probably a ridiculous question, but here it is nonetheless. Can you obtain a pulse oximeter reading >100? We had a call this evening for an individual c/o a racing heart. HR was running between 116-124. Several times I thought I saw the pulse ox read in excess of 100. Then I began to wonder if I was reading the numbers upside down but not correlating the correct reading with the correct measurement, ie pulse & O2 sat.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you were reading the pulse not the 02 sat. The sat only goes up to 100%
 
I agree. Sometimes, if you're quickly glancing at something, you might inadvertently look at the wrong item... thus leading to some confusion.
 
not unless you are dealing with some super ripped, cut up hulk haemoglobin :D
 
Which by the way is impossible.

There is no such thing as 100% SpO2,

I never chart more than 99% I don't care what the machine says
 
Oh bah impossible my bum ... to the oxyhaemoglobin dissassociation curve!
 
So Dr Brown thinks 0% is possible too?


Better keep those opinions to yourself if you ever want dust flung in your eye by rotor blades, my friend.
 
Thats why I always wear safety glasses!

Brown will go and review oxyhaemoglobin binding .... to Marieb!
 
keep in mind I am speaking physiolgically. not theoretical. Don't tell me that if you keep on counting you can get to infinity.
 
A pulse ox is just a meter. It can read anything that that the hardware and software allow.

One of our meters only has a 2 digit, 7 segment display so it cannot show anything higher than 99. The other has the same, but with a leading 1 which makes it capable of displaying up to 199. I have seen it read 100, but no higher.

Of course, the way we define SPO2, the upper limit should be 100, however a well designed piece of test equipment can measure in excess of what it is expected to. So, the pulse ox sensor should be able to measure characteristics which would put the displayed value above 100, even if it cannot really happen in a patient. I would also expect that most if not all meters would display 100 as a MAX value even if it calculates a higher number, as most EMTs are not test engineers would not know how to interpret these results properly.
 
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