Oximeter's

Longworth wrote:
Darrel,
Yeah, it's a nice thing to have but not essential to the pilot's
health or safety except the extreme cases. Not sure how expensive is
an oxygen system integrated with an oximeter (on-demand system) but
unless one is concerned about running out of oxygen, there is no point
of messing around manually with the regulator while flying. I'd be
curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while using oxygen.

We do in the Lancair...

I'd be curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while using
oxygen.

I don't. I may look at my nails periodically.

Ron Lee

I'd be curious to see how many pilots use the oximeter while
using oxygen.

100% of the time.
---
Ken Reed
N960CM

Hai Longworth wrote:

Yeah, it's a nice thing to have but not essential to the pilot's
health or safety except the extreme cases.

I'll disagree about "only in extreme cases". For a long time, I was
willing to fly at 12.5K ft without using O2. Every once in a while I'd
turn it on if I was feeling very tired, or was yawning a lot, and once
at 13.5K ft I THOUGHT I had turned it on, but hadn't, for a 2 hour leg.
I now think that having a pulse oximeter is an extremely useful tool to
tell you how well YOU'RE performing - we monitor the heck out of the
planes, but don't do a very good job of monitoring ourselves. The SpO2
monitor is a way of doing just that.

At any rate, here's a message I posted to the COZY mailing list
regarding an experiment (not controlled, but interesting nontheless) I
did earlier in the week:


We had previously had a discussion about SpO2 levels vs. time at
altitude.

So I flew to Las Vegas from Mojave today to pick up my wife, coming home
commercial. I took a different route - through the "Trona" gap, over
L72, and just south of China Lake. It's faster (more direct), but I had
to go higher to avoid mountains. On the way there, I decided to use my
SpO2 sensor to watch my O2 levels as I climbed without supplemental O2.

As I passed through 8K ft., I put on the gizmo. My SpO2 levels were in
the low 90's, and when I leveled out at 9500 ft., within a couple of
minutes at the most my SPO2 levels evened out at about 87%. Not great,
but OK for a while. After about 1/2 hour there, I climbed up to 11.5K
ft. for radar coverage, and within a minute my SpO2 levels were down to
78%. I did NOT put O2 on, but monitored my levels, which stayed at 78%.
I was yawning a bit, and deep breathing could raise the levels for a
short period, but when I went back to regular breathing, it would drop
back to 78%. After about 15 minutes at that level, I was cleared to
descend into LAS, and by the time I got down to about 6K ft, my SpO2
levels were back in the low 90's.

It seems clear that it takes very little time for the SpO2 levels to
change and stabilize when climbing and/or descending - a minute or so at
the most, at least for me.

On the way back, I set up the O2 system for both my wife and myself (she
gets headaches at 9K - 10K ft and above, it seems) and we headed out.
At 10.5K ft going west, with the O2 set to one liter/min for both of us,
our SpO2 levels were in the mid 90's - 96% for my wife, and 95% for me.
Personally, I didn't _feel_ much different, although I was definitely
yawning a lot less. I do know that I'm a lot less fatigued after O2
use.

It seems that _I_ should use O2 anytime above 10.5K ft, no matter what
the regs say - for my wife, it's about 9.5K ft for comfort reasons. It
also seems clear that there's no "reservoir" of O2 that's used up as you
climb - your SpO2 levels are dependent upon altitude, and not really on
the time at that altitude - a minute isn't very long.

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

Marc,
Your experiment appears to confirm our thinking that we should be
oxygen when flying above 10K. In our last several long cross-country
trips, we flew at 9K and 10K approximately 3-4hrs stretches and did not
feel tired or any differences from flying at lower altitudes. Others
may need oxygen at lower elevation. I knew few heavy smokers with
limited lung capacity having to drag oxygen bottles along all day. Of
course the oximeter is a very useful device but oxygen supply is the
key to our health and safety. I'm not at all against the use of
oximeter but would certainly get O2 bottles before buying an oximeter.
Come to think of it, yawning is a pretty good oximeter too ;-)

Hai Longworth

Marc,

Your experiment seemed to confirm our thinkng that we would need
oxygen if flying over 10,000ft. Last July on our trip from NY to MI,
when ATC asked us to climb from 8K to 10K, we were a bit concerned but
was glad to see that our performance did not seem to suffer. In the
next 3 long x-country trips, we filed at 10K and 9K and taking turns
flying 3-4hrs stretches. Again, we never noticed any problems. Of
course, we tried to have plenty of water and food. Few years ago, in
our trip to Ecuador, we stayed at Quito, 10K elevation for several
days. The first night, we both had headaches from dehydration and had
to drink quite a few of the hotel $3.5 Evian bottles!

The levels which you monitored also in the range indicated in this
article
http://www.mountainflying.com/oxygen.htm

"The atmospheric pressure decrease at 10,000-foot altitude causes 523mm
Hg ambient air pressure resulting in 87 percent hemoglobin saturation
and 61mm Hg arterial oxygen."

"The body requires hemoglobin saturations of 87-97 percent and arterial
oxygen at 60-100mm Hg (millimeters of mercury) in order to function
normally. Below this level the body is hypoxic"

I'd expect that smokers or people with emphysema etc. may have lower
hemoglobin saturation at lower altitudes.

My thinking was that as long as we take precaution to use oxygen at
above 10K, we would not need to monitor our body oxygen level if we
remain healthy. Your experience and others convinced me that the
oximeter is a very useful device and may be worth getting. I still
plan to get the Oxygen supply first and will rely on yawning to monitor
our fatigue until there is a good sale on the oximeter ;-)

Hai Longworth

Assuming that you don't have health issues that would make your
hemoglobin less saturated with oxygen at altitude than normal, and
assuming that you don't intend to challenge FARs pertaining to the use
of oxygen, what do you see as the value of carrying an oximeter?

NW_PILOT wrote:
Why Are Oximeter's So Expensive? I was thinking of adding one to my flight
bag but at over $200.00 I am giving it a second thought.

"RomeoMike" wrote in message
...
Assuming that you don't have health issues that would make your hemoglobin
less saturated with oxygen at altitude than normal, and assuming that you
don't intend to challenge FARs pertaining to the use of oxygen, what do
you see as the value of carrying an oximeter?

I can't speak for the original poster. However...

An oximeter provides useful information, even if you don't have specific
health issues, and aren't intending "to challenge FARs pertaining to the use
of oxygen" (whatever that means).

The FARs require the use of oxygen. They don't stipulate how much to use.
So, you can either rely on the calibration of your oxygen equipment, or you
can get some actual feedback on whether you are getting enough oxygen. The
latter (via an oximeter) may either show you that your own physiology
requires more O2 than normal or (more likely) that you can use less oxygen
than the likely conservative flow provided by the O2 equipment.

Beyond that very useful information, it also provides feedback regarding the
performance of your oxygen supply. It's one extra check on whether you are
getting enough oxygen, to help ensure that something doesn't go wrong
without the pilot knowing about it.

Hope that helps.

Pete

"Peter Duniho" writes:

The FARs require the use of oxygen. They don't stipulate how much to use.
So, you can either rely on the calibration of your oxygen equipment, or you
can get some actual feedback on whether you are getting enough oxygen.

Indeed. Once on the way home (Indiana) from California I stopped in Colorado
and needed oxygen. They didn't have the required fitting so I flew home with
what I had knowing I could always go lower if I ran out though it would
probably mean an extra stop for fuel. (I was VFR and it was VMC all the way
home. We have a big O2 tank and only two people.)

I reduced my wife's oxygen flow (because she was just resting anyway) but
when we crossed the Mississippi and she couldn't think of the word "barge" I
stuck her finger in the oximeter. She wasn't terribly low but she was lower
than usual so we increased her flow a bit.

And before I got the oximiter there was the time that I almost passed out
because I didn't notice my cannula had slipped while I was relieving myself
over the Rockies...

--kyler

Kyler Laird wrote:
And before I got the oximiter there was the time that I almost passed out
because I didn't notice my cannula had slipped while I was relieving myself
over the Rockies...


If I had to guess, I'd say there was a good chance everybody else on that flight
came close to passing out when you relieved yourself over the Rockies.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE