#TheDevDoctor #PulseOximeter #SatsProbe #HowStuffWorks

Hi Guys, welcome back to the channel. For those of you who are new; Hi my names Matt and I'm a junior doctor working in the UK's National Health Service and today I want to talk to you about how a pulse oximeter, or oxygen saturation probe, works.

Pulse oximetry has been used in medicine for some time now, but since the coronavirus pandemic, the public has been starting to use them more frequently to measure their own oxygen saturation. A pulse oximeter effectively tells us how much oxygen is in our blood at any one time.

Pulse oximeters exploit the difference in absorption profiles of red and near-infrared light to detect the level of oxygenation within the blood. Pulse oximeters emit two wavelengths of light, red light at 660 nm and near-IR at 940 nm from a pair of small light-emitting diodes located in one arm of the finger probe. The light that is transmitted through the finger is then detected by a photodiode on the opposite arm of the probe. From this, the probe can calculate the relative amount of red and IR light absorbed and this is used to ultimately determine the proportion of Hb bound to oxygen.

Thanks for watching the video guys. If you have any questions please remember to leave a comment below this video and I'll try to respond as soon as possible.

My Website:
https://www.thedevdoctor.com/

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Useful Links:

Using Pulse Oximeters: https://www.who.int/patientsafety/saf...

Pulse Oximetry: https://www.thoracic.org/patients/pat...

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