SaO2 and AHI

[growing]

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Friends,

I am new in oxymetry.

Yesterday, I started the two machines at the same time (+/- 2-3 seconds). What I think is I did not get any relation of a low SaO2 and apnea events. Is the observation correct?

[herefishy]

Kind of looks to me like the desat followed the apnea pretty closely, but I'm way far from an expert.

[HoseCrusher]

I agree that your desaturation doesn't seem to correlate with your AHI events.

With Pulse Oximetry data you need to look at the relationship between desaturations and an increase in pulse rate.

At around 1:20 - 1:40 your pulse rate spiked a little. After this spike your O2 saturation dropped. At about 2:10 you rolled over and probably woke up a little.

At around 3:40 your pulse spiked again and you had a short desaturation.

At around 5:10 your pulse spiked again. This time the desaturation was a little more intense and you ended up with several pulse spikes.

To get a better understanding of what is going on you need to zoom in and look at the data on a 5 or 10 minute range. This will also help you identify artifacts.

The question is what caused the desaturations... You would expect an apnea to start the process, but in this case that doesn't seem to be what is going on.

The process goes something like this. Your O2 levels drop. Your body gives your heart a shot of adrenaline to get it pumped up to deliver more oxygen to the body. Once your O2 levels are restored your body then has to deal with the after effects of the adrenaline jolt. Your body can handle a jolt or two a day, but after repeated jolts the process begins to wear down your cardiovascular system.