Coronavirus: Finger-clip device gives warning on oxygen level

Rhys Blakely

The Times

Gerry Gajadharsingh writes:

I guess the gap in PHE/NHS advice to the population is, when are you ill enough with COVID 19 symptoms to seek medical attention, given that 80% of the population get no, mild or moderate symptoms. Not wishing to overburden the NHS in the current climate or the fear of even going to an NHS hospital, may well have been putting people off, when they actually really needed help, some sadly have left it too late.

 I am lucky in that I have used oximeters for many years, mostly on patients when I assess their breathing behaviour or when I am lecturing clinicians on the use of Capnometry and Heart Rate Variability monitoring. An oximeter is a simple device that you usually put on the end of your finger to measure the level of oxygen saturated in your blood. When my son Max developed symptoms, fever, sore throat, tonsillitis etc, I would monitor him every day at home. Luckily his O2 sats always stayed above 97% and he recovered from his symptoms after 5 days with a little help from the old man!

 I know that some of my patients have purchased pulse oximeters to help them or them family monitor themselves during the current situation.

 The article below is quite timely and flags up using an oximeter at home could help people who are falling severely ill and prompt them to seek medical intervention.

 The doctor goes onto say that the Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call ‘silent hypoxia’.

 O2 is a significant metabolic fuel and drives all cellular reactions, if cells are deprived of oxygen they will eventually die.

 I also wonder if people realise that when they breathe fast and deep, they deplete CO2, this also causes hypoxia on a cellular level. Yes, you heard me correctly deep breathing for too long will deplete CO2 and therefore lower oxygenation on a cellular level.”

 Have a look at the links below

https://www.thehealthequation.co.uk/breathing-re-education/

https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthequation

 A simple device that monitors oxygen levels at home could help to identify people who are falling severely ill with Covid-19, doctors have said.

Experts are concerned that significant numbers are not receiving care quickly enough, which leads to a hard-to-detect form of viral pneumonia.

Richard Levitan, an American doctor, said that the volume of patients who need a ventilator could be reduced if people with symptoms such as fever and cough monitored themselves using pulse oximeters. These are small devices that clip on a finger to measure oxygen levels in the blood.

“We are just beginning to recognise that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call ‘silent hypoxia’ — ‘silent’ because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature,” he wrote in The New York Times.

Pulse oximeters, which can be bought for £23, had helped to save two of his friends, he added. Detection of low oxygen levels, early treatment and close monitoring also appeared to have helped Boris Johnson.

British experts agreed that pulse oximeters could provide a valuable early warning but said that the NHS would have to be geared up to respond.

Professor Babak Javid, consultant in infectious diseases at Cambridge University Hospitals, said: “Many of the features of Covid are strikingly reminiscent of other lung infections that interfere with the ability of the lungs to oxygenate the blood. However, in some people that may be previously fit and well, this may not be apparent.”

“These patients are likely to be at risk of becoming severely unwell in a few hours, or a day or two, but if this ‘post-exercise saturation’ test is not performed, they may be falsely reassured that they are not seriously unwell.”

Whether a patient is admitted into hospital depends on several factors, including their age, frailty, underlying health conditions and their condition, which would include oxygen levels.

Andrew Farmery, professor of anaesthetics at the Nuffield department of clinical neurosciences at the University of Oxford, said that the viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19 appeared to be unique. “Many have commented that phenotypically it’s more like altitude sickness than pneumonia, with patients hypoxic and breathless without significant pneumonic inflammation,” he said.

Dr Levitan described how he spent ten days in New York’s Bellevue Hospital, where he helped to insert breathing tubes into Covid-19 patients. He was surprised to see that patients admitted for other reasons and who did not realise they had Covid-19 were showing signs of pneumonia, where the lungs become inflamed and fill with fluid.