When Pulse Oximetry Became Extremely Common
The original company to take pulse oximetry to the marketplace was Biox in 1981, which was launched in the late 70’s. The concept of pulse oximetry had been first introduced in 1935 and was a medical device that calculated a patient’s oxygen saturation, however it would take a long time for the concept to blossom and be as large as it is currently. Biox initially focused the development of pulse oximeter use on respiratory health care, to monitor patients’ oxygen percentages, who had been put in the hospital resulting from ailments and health problems that impacted their breathing. It would take little time at all for medical professionals in the medical field to expand the applications of pulse oximeters.
Other manufacturers quickly recognized the necessity for pulse oximetry devices and started acquiring their share in the pulse oximetry industry. By 1983, corporations had focused their pulse oximeter sales to hospital operating rooms. Ahead of the introduction of pulse oximeter equipment, the death rate on operating tables or in recovery rooms post-surgery was elevated and at times eclipsed 10,000 deaths in a year. The problem was that as patients were being operated on, blood oxygen levels would fall because of the anesthesia, which also lowered the patient’s pulse rate and blood circulation . Since the only technique to monitor their oxygen levels at the time was by blood test, it had been nearly impossible to recognize if and when the blood oxygen level became critical. Because your human body must have oxygen to thrive, but without oxygen it takes merely 5 minutes for brain damage to happen and within only 10 or 15 minutes complete death of the brain will happen. Allowing doctors to observe an individual’s oxygen level prevented the oxygen levels from becoming too low, which contributed to fewer deaths, because the physicians could react swiftly and increase administered oxygen to ideal levels. The creation of pulse oximetry medical devices changed the way physicians performed surgical procedures and changed the health care field in a favorable and significant way.
The use of pulse oximetry expanded and quickly became standard when administering anesthesia, but soon, pulse oximetry was not only in operating rooms, but expanded throughout the entire medical care industry and transformed the medical industry entirely. It did not take very long for pulse oximeter use to expand further and become improved upon and more useful. In 1995, Signal Extraction Technology was designed and permitted people to take pulse oximetry into their own homes. Those that endured ailments like sleep apnea, could now utilize pulse oximetry during the night to ensure that their body’s oxygen levels stayed safe, and the individual’s chance of brain damage or even death was then considerably diminished.
Currently, most every doctor’s office and every room in any hospital has a pulse oximetry device as a part of their standardized equipment. The creation of these medical devices improved our lives in many ways, but one of the most important ways was in the operating room. Anesthesia is now much safer because an individual’s blood oxygen level can be continually monitored to make sure it never reaches deadly levels. Despite the fact that pulse oximetry began as a simple theory many years ago, it is now one of the most standard and useful instrument associated with modern day medicine.
Modern day finger pulse oximeter equipment offers people an inexpensive way to check their own blood oxygen levels and pulse rates in their own homes.
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