COPD Management News and Views

Patients in Cambridgeshire suffering with breathlessness will benefit from improved assessment and care of this condition – following Cambridgeshire PCT’s purchase of new non-invasive equipment, which could mean the difference between life and death.

With the purchase of 133 pulse oximeters from diagnostic company, Axis-Shield UK, Cambridgeshire PCT will have the ability to detect changes in a patient’s oxygen saturation, enabling them to identify problems before the patient is put at risk.

HuntsComm, a practice based commissioning board based in Huntingdonshire, was able to purchase these pulse oximeters as a result of a successful business case submitted to Cambridgeshire PCT.  The success of this case resulted from the proposed use of the pulse oximeters to reduce emergency admissions and provide a higher quality of domiciliary patient care.

Dr Paula Newton, GP at Papworth Surgery, said: “As a member of the HuntsComm Board and a local GP I was delighted that we were successful in this business case. Low oxygen levels in the blood can be fatal and is difficult to detect on clinical examination alone. Using a pulse oximeter can help clinicians to decide whether an emergency admission and oxygen treatment is needed. Recently I used a pulse oximeter in a rare situation where a patient with a wasp sting on their tongue was in respiratory difficulty and needed urgent treatment. The oximeter helped us all to stay calm as we were confident the oxygen levels were staying at a safe level whilst we were resuscitating the patient and waiting for the ambulance.”

Continuing she said: “An average admission with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) costs the NHS £3,000 and there is a higher risk of morbidity and mortality when patients are inpatients compared to being cared for in a community setting. In patients with chronic respiratory conditions, such as COPD, the monitoring of these conditions is made much simpler and more accurate by regular use of pulse oximetry. The provision of these devices has enabled practices to place one in every consulting room and they can also be easily transported to patients’ homes when visits are required. We can now use them routinely in our consultations on a daily basis and have received considerable positive feedback from practices using them.”

Pulse oximeters give an idea of a patient’s cardio-respiratory status by measuring the arterial oxygen saturation of haemoglobin. They use non-invasive selected wavelengths of light to determine this, with no need to actually take a sample of blood from a patient. There are many illnesses that can cause the symptoms of breathlessness, including; asthma, heart failure, lung disease, COPD and some forms of cancer. 

For further information about Axis-Shield UK products please visit www.axis-shielduk.com

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Filed under: COPD-Related News