O2, Question for medics.

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 21:01:57 -0700 (PDT), FZ
wrote:

There are a few hundred oxygen masks and O2 tanks in a gliding community. Are those of any potential use in a CronaVirus emergency?

On this topic, there is a company south of Dallas that is currently
shipping hyperbaric oxygen hoods for meeting Covid-19 demand in
hospitals.

Sea-Long Medical Systems
https://www.sea-long.com/

See the following stories.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...virus-n1173466

On Monday, March 23, 2020 at 12:44:30 PM UTC-4, Duster wrote:
A pulse oximeter is quite reliable at cold altitudes in turbulence.

Another factor to ponder is the effect of bright sunshine on a device that depends on a red LED.

https://www.danlj.org/~danlj/Soaring...-p18-20-22.pdf


On the other hand, pulse oximeter ARE designed to work indoors sitting quietly in a chair or resting in bed.

On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 13:57:46 -0700, son_of_flubber wrote:

On the other hand, pulse oximeter ARE designed to work indoors sitting
quietly in a chair or resting in bed.

What about units such as those sold by https://www.welluehealth.com/
like their Sleep-U with the electronics on a wrist-band with the sensor
clipping on a finger at the end of a flying lead or the Contec CMS50F,
where the entire unit is on your wrist.

Sure, the Sleep-U is probably unsuitable, though I like its physical
setup, which is unlikely to get in the way in the air, while the Contec
unit advertises itself as suitable for sports use, though not while
exercising, but that probably isn't a problem for us.

I'm curious about the medical-grade devices because I bought one of the
El-cheapo ($25) Anapulse units 4 years ago before a trip to Scotland in
search of wave, which never materialised. Had me doubts about it from the
start because its a bulky *******, but seemed work OK when I bought it.

I put new batteries in recently to see if it still worked. Turns out that
it detects my pulse, but seems to have entirely lost its ability to
measure O2 percentage - nothing on the display works apart from the
flashing pulse...pulse... bar graph. No O2 percentage or pulse rate are
shown. IOW its now a piece of junk.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 5:38:04 PM UTC-4, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 13:57:46 -0700, son_of_flubber wrote:

On the other hand, pulse oximeter ARE designed to work indoors sitting
quietly in a chair or resting in bed.

What about units such as those sold by https://www.welluehealth.com/
like their Sleep-U with the electronics on a wrist-band with the sensor
clipping on a finger at the end of a flying lead

Those are nice. Nonin has similar for $$$s.

The last time I had hypoxia-induced euphoria in flight, I had to resist a very strong urge to climb higher. Funny how euphoria works.

son_of_flubber wrote:

On the other hand, pulse oximeter ARE designed to work indoors sitting
quietly in a chair or resting in bed.


You can test this pretty easily, of course. I have 4 different models, only one of which went into error mode when moved real close to an incandescent bulb. It first must capture your HR via arterial pulse, then will read out saturation. Not as accurate as measuring arterial SaO2 via blood draw. You can find units that will send an alert if your SpO2 goes below a set %. If you want to fly with one, the finger units are too cumbersome when handling the stick, so you could consider buying an earlobe PO that isn't.

https://heymedsupply.com/clip-pulse-...0aAi5DEALw_wcB

https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/48/suppl_60/PA3702

On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 6:32:47 PM UTC-4, Duster wrote:

You can test this pretty easily, of course.

Testing is good. One of the reasons I find the Logging Pulse-Oximeters attractive is that I might gradually (over multiple flights) gain confidence in the unit by reviewing that the log captured expected O2 saturation vs. altitude (post-flight review).

These units also log heart rate. An exercise physiologist told me that heartrate commonly increases in parallel with altitude induced reduction in O2 saturation.

Physiology is complicated.