Found on a generic smartwatch listing on Amazon.
Okay, paramedic here, let me break it down:
Heart rate: this is fine, a little low for running, though. The biggest problem here, imo, is the leading zero. It justooks bad.
Blood pressure: this is all fucked up. The higher number is always first, always, just because of how you read blood pressures. See, you place the stethoscope on the brachial artery and inflate the cuff until you stop hearing the bruit (the “thump” noise) of blood coming through the artery and then a little more again. Then, you start deflating and listening for the first bruit. The pressure at which you hear the first bruit is the systolic pressure, the high number, which is your blood pressure while your heart is contracting. Then, you keep going until you hear the last bruit. That last bruit is the diastolic pressure, the low number, and it represents the pressure in your arteries while your heart is relaxed (not squeezing). It’s always written systolic/diastolic, or high/low for the layman. Anyhow, a blood pressure of 36/20 is not something that I would generally consider to be compatible with life. The lower bound for people who are not dying tends to be pretty close to 90-80/something (diastolic is A LOT more loosely goosey than systolic, as a rule. There’s much more short term tolerance for weird diastolic numbers). Also, the leading zeroes again, ugh.
The pulse oximetry- The number of the right is the pulse oximetry. If you have an oximetry of 30%, your sensor is fucked and you need to adjust it. Oximeters are really only considered accurate until about 80-85%, below that and they’re just basically making shit up. Plus, they’re famously inaccurate, and there’s all kinds of stuff that interferes with them functioning properly, so a wildly low oximetry is almost always a malfunction. At any rate, functioning, not obviously dying people don’t typically have oximetries below 90%, though there are certain diseases and edge cases that are exceptions. If this dude did actually have a blood oxygen sat in the 30% range, he’d be in cardiac arrest. And please, please, please nuke the leading zero.
Thank you for your insight! We need more of this on Lemmy!
If you have an oximetry of 30%, you either have a potential zombie outbreak on your hands, or; your sensor is fucked and you need to adjust it.
Fixed that for you 👍
P.S. Thanks, that was a great read.
Man I had a blood oxygen reading of 84-about for a couple of years and every time they’d be like, “oh that can’t be right sweetie, you wouldn’t have walked in here if it was!”
It was right, one corrective surgery later, and I’m 96-98% blood oxygen. Can confirm, 36% is cause for concern.
I was on drugs to keep my heart rate down after heart surgery and would run with around an 86 BPM heart rate. It was hard.
My resting heart rate is comically low. Like 43bpm low. I couldn’t imagine 86bpm as resting. 50 feels fast to me at this point.
Every damn time someone puts one of those stupid heart rate monitors on me they start panicking.
I ended up in the er (not my idea) and once I was back in the room, with the monitor on, every five minutes or so, some nurse would poke their head in “ you feeling ok?” “You sure?” “Your heart rate is really low. You sure you’re ok?”
Before the surgery they sent me in for a testing procedure and I kept setting off the alarm. It seemed to happen whenever my heart rate dropped below 45bpm. No one seemed concerned though
Eventually, both husband and I would say I’m a runner, when they would come in, and that seemed to assuage their concerns. The first handful asked that, and I’d say yes, and they seemed good with that answer. I’m sure a lot of their concern was because I was there for heart things to begin with.
I did also learn that day that the apple watch heart rate was spot on with the one in the hospital. The hospital turned the alarm off pretty quickly since it wouldn’t shut up.
I’ve had other way weirder experiences with nurses freaking about my low heartrate though.
FWIW “normal” heart rates are like 60-100 (and women apparently have higher. I’m a woman) so I can see a wildly low deviation setting some alarm bells off, but if patient isn’t even surprised or concerned, that should be a pretty good indication of it being normal for them.
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