Brandon O
Puzzled by facies
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FWIW the AHA advocates a cutoff of >94% in many situations, which doesn't necessarily have a massive body of evidence going for it but seems reasonable.
Pulse Ox
- Thread starter Hepinghand
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JPINFV
Gadfly
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Personally, I love and look forward to the Class I/Class IIa, LOE C guidelines. Those are my favorite!
Brandon O
Puzzled by facies
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There is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against a reply to this post.
Joe
Forum Captain
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yea i work in Los Angeles county. you can thanks Los Angeles County Fire Dept for that! haha but seriously we are never first in and mostly we just drive and monitor. serious pt's get an als assist from fire so i really dont get to practice my skills as much as i would like. i am however pretty good at ePcr;s
h34r:
JPINFV
Gadfly
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mycrofft
Still crazy but elsewhere
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Hey I resemble that caveman remark
Before my tx/rx, my pulseox hovered around 96 on a good day, while at work. My friends tell me (now!) I looked gray.
Before my tx/rx, my pulseox hovered around 96 on a good day, while at work. My friends tell me (now!) I looked gray.
JPINFV
Gadfly
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yea i work in Los Angeles county. you can thanks Los Angeles County Fire Dept for that! haha but seriously we are never first in and mostly we just drive and monitor. serious pt's get an als assist from fire so i really dont get to practice my skills as much as i would like. i am however pretty good at ePcr;s
That was the thing with Orange County IFTs (I worked for Lynch Ambulance from 2005-2007). Since the only paramedics were with the fire departments, all SNF emergency calls were ran by EMTs by default, and paramedics were only called if the EMTs deemed necessary by both transport time and patient condition. Southern California, the only place where the better emergency experience is at the IFT companies. Good for EMTs, terrible for patients.
Joe
Forum Captain
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yea its kinda frustrating. but we run l&s to every call and 90% of the time its code driving to the hospital so i call it an even trade (kidding)
JPINFV
Gadfly
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God forbid firefighters miss an episode of Jersey Shore or Real Housewives of Orange County.
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I think they're great.
They're generally very accurate at telling you what percentage of the patient's hemoglobin is saturated with oxygen.
As long as we understand what that means, and that in a couple of conditions we can get false high readings, we're golden.
We can make judgments about the likely range of SpO2 if the patient is cyanotic. But this is much less accurate than pulse oximetry, particularly if the patient is anemic or polycythemic.
It forms a part of the clinical gestalt. A reading of 68% suggests severe hypoxia. But if you RSI a walking, talking, GCS 15 patient, with no dyspnea, because of the pulseox, then you're being silly. Just as if you take a 70 year old with no complaints and give her "a little bit of oxygen to bump up her sats", because she's sitting at 91%.
I have never understood the fear of the pulse oximeter that seems to exist in EMS. While a lot of our patients may be anemic, I can't imagine too many really have high amounts of carboxyhemoglobin or methemoglobin. It's not like we're going to withhold oxygen on someone with a saturation of 99% who is presenting with signs or symptoms of acute hypoxia. Somehow the glucometer just doesn't inspire as much fear.