What are your opinions on the current oximeters on the market? Do any of them clearly stand out above the rest, in your on opinion and experiences. I have do side by side trials in the NICU on the two top competitors and found very little performance differences, if any. I have done these trials on very sick kids, very active kids, big kids, little kids, you name it, not much difference. Please post your opinions/experiences. Thanks.

I just saw a similar thread on the pediatric lung list (I think it's on VentWorld's listserv page in the Resources section). Here are some of the postings:


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Can I hear from those who have practical experience with the Masimo Radical
and the Nellcor N-595. We are about to spend taxpayer dollars to replace old
oximeters and have narrowed the field to these two.I have reviewed the
cuurent literature and heard each companies pitch. Specifically, which one
do you prefer, why, and is there much of a cost difference?

Thanks for any insight!

Henry Wojtczak

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Henry,
We are using the several of the Masimo Radical oximeters and are very
pleased with its performance and capabilites, including during overnight
trending in infants and exercise testing.

Andy

Andrew Lipton, MD, MPH&TM
MAJ, USA, MC
Chief, Pediatric Pulmonology
San Antonio Military Pediatric Center

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I have had much experience with the two pulse oximeters in the past several
months. Depending of the use, there are advantages and disadvantages with
both. Certainly, for home use or any use at all the Radical triggers much
less false alarms due to movement artefact. This is perhaps not valid
though for the small premature; we have had problems with difficulties in
capturing a good pulse waveform. In the home setting, parents who had had
another monitor at home just cannot believe the difference it makes. The
Radical has its drawbacks. Cost of probes. If you go for that brand name,
make sure you have a very good deal for the probes.
Also with the Radical, if there are very fast oscillations in SpO2 (like
during prolonged periodic breathing with oscillations to the low 80s), the
oximeter reads much lower for the nadir, sometimes by more than 10 and I do
believe that it is the Radical which is wrong not the other. The clinicians
should be aware of that.
The N 595 has a good feature: Satseconds that you can set up independently
of the SpO2 limit. It does limit the number of alarms of low SpO2. It is
not as "movement artefact proof" as the Radical.

If you are interested in downloading, both have short averaging time so the
tracings reproduce what the patient actually had. The N 595 has 48 hours
of memory, the Radical has much longer, up to one month. However, with one
of the popular software: Profox, you cannot get more than 72 hours anyway.
You have to buy another software that can handle all that data. In general
it is very slow (hours to download 2-3 weeks of data). But not everybody
wants to look at data at home; for short "documented monitoring period",
the Radical is excellent.

I hope this is helpful to you

Aurore Cote
The Montreal Children's Hospital