O2 is 81, what shoud you do?

If you worked in the neonatal ICU and jumped everytime a chronic RDS kiddo hit 81, you'd be doing a whole lot of jumpin'!

i didnt know we was talkin neonates here...

If you worked in the neonatal ICU and jumped everytime a chronic RDS kiddo hit 81, you'd be doing a whole lot of jumpin'!

Just becasue someone doest jump at a problem doesnt make the problem not exist. 81% sustained for anyone is too low. I personally am very interested to hear your rationale behind why an Sp02 of 81@ on a Neonate, let alone an adult isnt a concern to you? Ive worked in critical care, Respiratory Therapy and with neonates and this is the first time Ive ever heard this one?

Neonates are an entirely different patient group and the same rules don´t apply....

Some of my patients make regular desats down to 10 (sats) and we watch and just stand back and wait for them to recover again. Doing somehing, anything, even just opening the incubator doors only means that the baby will take longer to recover.

To stand back even if the patient is doing poorly is one of the hardest lessons one needs to learn doing neonate care. It doesn´t mean that I don´t care about it, I still do an assesment and try to decide the moment when this isn´t ok anymore.

Some babies go from 97 to 15 to 96 in just a few minutes, disturbing them just means they will stay longer in the lower range.

Sorry, didn´t mean to hijack the thread..

Anna

I would be very interested in reading any literature or studies that you have that suggest a sustained Sp02 of 80% for a neonate is an acceptable practice.

There was no mention of "sustaining" sats of 80%. It's not uncommon for chronic babies with BPD to drop their sats down to 80. Typically they go right back up with no intervention.

As far as sustaining sats at 80% .... that's actually where we want our cardiac babies to be (i.e. doctors will write orders to keep sats 75-90).

It's all about knowing your patient population.