Well it's Monday morning and I'm getting bored reading a thesis into pulse oximetry, then something came along that amused me (I'm easily amused). It was a desciption of the 'novel' use of a pulse oximeter to measure oxygen saturation in a female who is reading about one of her sexual fantasies.
I'll leave it up to the reader to guess where the oximeter was attatched during these studies.
This got me thinking... I wonder if I can manage to fit the pharse 'female sexual fantasy' into my thesis :-)
In other news I went to the MedSchool library today to get big books on non-invasive physiological measurements. Very exciting stuff.
huh? clit? lol, exciting indeed
Posted by: ubermensch on October 4, 2004 7:08 PMHer finger?
This sounds like some stupid thing done because it sounds funny, or to get in the Christmas BMJ or something like that. Oxygen saturation is not a measure of blood flow, nor does it measure oxygen delivery to the tissues. I don't know which part of the woman it was attached to, but I'm going to assume it was a nipple or the clitoris. Those areas have a good blood supply, so there's no reason why the pulse oximeter would measure saturations lower than that at the finger tips - about 96-97% if she was well.
As she got excited, the pulse rate would go up, and breathing more heavily might increase the saturations by a percent or two. However, this would be exactly the same at the fingertips, the nipples, the clitoris, or wherever.
So what were they trying to show, Ed? It all sounds rather pointless to me.
Posted by: Tom on October 4, 2004 10:54 PMMy theory on the matter is is that the guy who wrote the thesis was betted that he couldn't get the pharse "female sexual fantasy" into his thesis and managed too.
Tomorrow I'll see if he's referenced who did the study.
Posted by: Ed on October 4, 2004 11:04 PMThinking about it... although I'm not well versed in it all yet... and correct me where I'm wrong, but...
Oxygen saturation is related to the partial oxygen pressure by the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve, so if there's a lower partial oxygen pressure in the clit for some reason when she's fantasising (assuming breathing rate and pulse remain constant) than when she's not fantasising why wouldn't the saturation be different?
ie they could have been looking at the difference in saturation and not the absolute values.
It appears that it was just a plain photoplethysmogram they were taking and whilst the data could be used for calculating SpO2, I suppose it might have just been used for calculating blood volume. The thesis doesn't say.
I don't like mornings
Posted by: Ed on October 5, 2004 9:30 AM