Pulse Ox reading.

My dad is in the hospital and was on a pulse ox machine, when I checked the monitor his pulse wave looked V-Tach most of the  time. When I hooked it up to me I noticed I had the image of a left bundle branch block (rabbit ears) and terminal notching or another smaller r wave. The rest of the time I had a normal wave form

[whineyhiney]

that's nice..............nice to meet you.  you do know this has nothing to do with an ekg, right.

[LukeL]

I am aware of that, but why was my waveform so complex with clear p,q,r,s, and t waves yet my dads only had a rounded qrs complex.

[va_tony]

Perhaps I'm confused.  A pulse oximeter  indirectly measures the amount of oxygen in a patient's blood. It doesn't let you look at q, r, s, t waves.  To do that, you would need to be hooked up to an ekg and I can't believe you pulled off the ekg leads from your Dad and hooked them up to yourself. Likely, you just took the finger clip from the oximeter and placed that on your own finger. In that case, you wouldn't see your ekg on the monitor.  That monitor would still be showing your Dad's ekg waveforms, as he was still hooked up.

[SillyHeart]

A pulse ox measures oxygen content in the blood.  Putting the finger sensor on your finger would measure only your blood oxygen content.

[LukeL]

The doctor said he no longer needed it, so I decided for fun to see my reading. This pulse ox also showed the heart rate and a waveform tracing.

[SillyHeart]

No, it didn't.  A pulse oximeter can't show more than your blood oxygen content and your pulse.

[LukeL]

Well this one did. It is called a Photoplethysmograpg

[va_tony]

There is a pretty good explanation of the Photoplethsmograph (oximeter) on wikipedia.  Just google it.

Some oximeter units do show a plot of the pulse pressure, the difference between the systolic and diastolic pressure in the arteries. The cardiac cycle can be seen and even PVCs and VT/VF.  But this is not an ekg reading and there are no P, Q, R, S, T waves. The plot is not interpreted in the same way as an ekg. It wouldn't be able to diagnose left bundle branch block.  Anyway, check out the wikepedia article.

[LukeL]

okay thankyou, I just saw the rabbit ears notching on what looked like a qrs complex.

[whineyhiney]

I want one of these..lol.