Daily monitoring in Pulsar pulsoximeters

Pulse oximetry reliably records oxygenation disorders, including during sleep and allows for assessing their severity. Pulsar-M1 Pulse Oximeter with recording and saving in memory of SP02 values and pulse rate (PR) provides detection of hypoxia during 24 hours of patient observation (Monitoring option). For further differentiation of the nature of respiratory disorders associated with sleep, an apnea recorder – “Pulsar-M2” pulse oximeter with Monitoring option should be chosen. A significant difference of the Pulsar-M2 pulse oximeter is the ability to record a photoplethysmogram (PPG), spirogram, phonogram, as well as the patient’s body position during 24 hours of observation, in addition to the SPO2 and pulse rate values available in Pulsar-M1.

The Monitoring software option in Pulsar pulse oximeters allow assessing the state of the cardio-respiratory system for 24 hours – to identify hypoxia, to determine the conditions and time of its occurrence. Before the start of the examination, the patient’s data, the duration of the monitoring period, the need for stress testing are recorded. At the end of the monitoring period, the recorded data from the registrar are transferred to a PC, where they are analyzed using the preinstalled “IntelOxy” software. Examples of monitoring protocols are shown in Fig. 1, 2, respectively, for Pulsar-M1 and for Pulsar-M2. The monitoring protocol, in addition to the values of significant parameters, such as the desaturation index (for Pulsar-M1), apnea/hypopnea and desaturation indices (for Pulsar-M2), contains SP02 and pulse rate trends, as well as color diagrams that allow determining hypoxia in the patient “at a glance”, as well as the degree of its severity. In addition, the monitoring protocols of Pulsar-M2 also contain a photoplethysmogram, a spirogram, a phonogram with a snoring level, as well as an index of body position throughout the entire observation period of the patient.

PPG analysis (available in Pulsar-M2) allows determining the heart rate, its variability, as well as to assess the quality of peripheral blood flow. A decrease in the PPG amplitude is a sign of peripheral vasoconstriction and/or a decrease in the stroke volume of the heart. Vascular tone is the main factor determining the amplitude of PPG waves.

Chronic hypoxia leads to irreversible consequences in a human organism and, at the same time, the huge reserves of respiration in humans allows an organism to adapt to it. That is why patients with respiratory failure caused by chronic pulmonary diseases (COPD, asthma, etc.) can be compensated for a long time and live with acute symptoms.

The use of Pulsar pulse oximeters in the long-term monitoring mode, including the use of stress testing protocols, allows for recording chronic respiratory failure in such patients, as well as to determine its severity.

No less important is the use of monitoring pulse oximeters in a specialist in therapeutic profile, general practitioner, pulmonologist, cardiologist to identify ‘difficult’ clinical situations, which include sleep disturbance. Sleep apnea/hypapnea syndrome (obstructive, central and mixed) is referred to as sleep-related breathing disorder. Apnea is considered to be an episode of respiratory arrest lasting more than 10 seconds, and hypapnea is a decrease in airflow of more than 50% from the previous stable baseline ventilation lasting more than 10 seconds and accompanied by a decrease in SpO2 of more than 3%. In this situation, the use of the Pulsar-M1 monitoring pulse oximeter will allow registering hypoxia and assessing its severity based on the determination of the desaturation index, and the Pulsar-M2 apnea-registrar – in addition to determining the desaturation index, directly register the cessation of breathing with the calculation of the apnea/hypapnea index, registration snoring, as well as the body positions in which this situation occurs.