Posted by technician on May 31, 2002 at 09:55:20:In Reply to: hold the O2? posted by steve on May 07, 2002 at 22:33:10:
Our protocol is: If sat drops below 65 for 5 epochs, start O2; if sat drops below 55 at all, start O2. Your point about masking the severity of hypopneas is well made. It is likely that the patient may have suffered desaturation which is more severe than what you see on the night of the study, and still survived. For the sake of obtaining the most accurate assessment of the patient's baseline values, desats should be allowed to occur. If we were seeing serial desats to the high sixties, with, say, increased PVC's, I'd consider it prudent to start O2, once the record documents adequately the severety in depth and frequency of the desats over an acceptable interval. The lab's medical director or physician in charge should be fully apprised, if not as this occurs, then comprehensively in the record, as during interpretation, he will have to make some inferences due to masking of sypmt. by the administration of therapeutic O2. The tech staff, of course, needs to be very alert to all other parameters, to insure patient safety.