• Critical care medicine · Jul 1991

    Measurement of systolic blood pressure using pulse oximetry during helicopter flight.

    • P O Talke.
    • Department of Anesthesiology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Shriners Burns Institute, Galveston 77550.
    • Crit. Care Med. 1991 Jul 1;19(7):934-7.

    ObjectiveMonitoring of vital signs in critically ill patients during helicopter flight is difficult because of the noise and vibrations of the aircraft. We evaluated the use of a pulse oximeter to measure systolic BP intraflight.DesignSystolic BP measured by pulse oximetry was compared with systolic BP measured by the direct intra-arterial and the arterial occlusion methods intraflight. Systolic BP by pulse oximetry was measured by observing the return of the plethysmographic waveform of the pulse oximeter as the BP cuff ipsilateral to the pulse oximeter probe was slowly deflated. Arterial occlusion pressure was measured by observing the return of the intraarterial waveform as the BP cuff ipsilateral to the arterial cannula was slowly deflated.SettingThe study was performed during patient transport, intraflight.PatientsTen critically ill patients were studied.InterventionsNoneMeasurements And Main ResultsSeventy-three sets of measurements were recorded. The best correlation (r2 = .99) was found between pulse oximetry and the arterial occlusion method. The indirect methods correlated better with each other than with direct intraarterial measurements. The noise and the vibrations of the helicopter did not significantly interfere with the operation of the pulse oximeter.ConclusionsWe conclude that a pulse oximeter that displays a plethysmographic waveform can accurately measure systolic BP intraflight.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.