What are Pulse Oximeters?

A pulse oximeter is a noninvasive medical device that measures the oxygen saturation in a patient’s blood and his or her pulse rates.  Pulse oximeters are very convenient and useful as they can be used with no trouble anytime and anywhere –as there is what we call the portable pulse oximeters.

This is how pulse oximeters work.  Clipped to a translucent part of a patient’s body (usually a finger or earlobe), a photodiode is faced with a pair of small light-emitting diodes (LED) which has two different wavelengths—one LED is an infrared and the other is red.  Absorption at the said wavelengths differs a lot between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, thus, making it possible to calculate the ratio between the two.

The most widely used types of pulse oximeters are the finger pulse oximeters which are attached to the fingertip.  Leading brands in pulse oximeters are nonin pulse oximeters and nellcor pulse oximeters.