I never get the oximeter at visits, but my wife usually does.
Yep to the oximeter and no to any lung condition.
They sometimes also use a blood pressure cuff.
1 Like
Very odd - I have practiced medicine for 30 years and routinely review records of other doctors in many specialties.
I have never heard of the use of pulse oximetry in a routine primary care setting for a patient with no pulmonary symptoms and no proposed or confirmed pulmonary or cardiac diagnosis.
I couldn’t say how odd it is. We like the doctor. The paper you linked did mention GPs use it 10-20% of the time for either pulse or respiratory checks. To me those seem reasonable to check when a patient has booked an appointment because she’s sick or concerned about something, even if it’s just to be able to provide reassurance. It takes seconds and is free once the exam room has the equipment.
My doctor has been putting on a pulse oximeter first thing, followed by using a sphygmomanometer* every visit. The PO also takes the pulse so it saves time over doing that manually.
Note that I have no pulmonary or heart problems, but I am almost 75, so it’s probably good that he checks such things.
*That’s one of my favorite words!
Apple has decided it’s needed. Humanity must align.
1 Like
It may well be done primarily to check your pulse and the incidentally for the oximetry.
But there are two parts to checking a pulse- (1) The rate [a number]; and (2) The rhythm [Is it regular or irregular, i.e. to screen for A. fib.]. The PulseOx records the rate but not the rhythm.
I think that’s a bit of a jaded perspective. IMHO, any and every reasonably-inexpensive sensor that’s available should be in these types of devices. You can always not use the data if you don’t want it.
1 Like
2 Likes
WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Apple cannot sell two flagship Apple Watch models in the U.S. as the iPhone maker fights a legal battle over patents covering a blood oxygen measurement feature, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/court-bars-us-apple-watch-imports-during-appeal-over-ban-2024-01-17/
Me too, you can’t even get in to see the doctor until you’ve had a PO2 test and the nurses all know that I expect to be told the results of the BP, PO2 and pulse o rI get really angry. And they have to stay there while I document it on my iPad I carry to all doctor visits.
Or because you do not live at altitude or are in an area with poor vaccination rates for COVID? Our house is at 6200 ft, and our county has one of the worst COVID vaccination rates in the state. Both are factors in severe illness that can be first detected by a PO2 measurement.
Not here. It’s routine for everyone to get that test by the nurse before you ever even get to see a doctor or nurse practitioner. (Doctors are thin on the ground here, there aren’t very many and very hard toget in to see one.)
Yes, for me and everyone else I know. They also do the blood pressure cuff with pulse and BP. It’s routine.
1 Like
Well there is a case that speed limits should not be 3 MPH and that one needs a servant walking in front of the vehicle with a red lamp. As was the case when cars were introduced: again some politics involved even then.
Maybe the answer now is really speed bumps and calming measures and less, in fact no cars, in my view. Nobody in Pa follows speed limits and the cops have given up: one might argue that they still have an effect and can be used in egregious cases? Recently a 100 MPH dash round my area which is not safe at 40 MPH… no prosecutions for obvious reasons…
However that is a tangent but your analogy cuts deeper maybe than one might think at first sight. There is a whole publicly supported infrastructure, the elephant in the room, that keeps the roads open and clear for the car industry. Well not so much in PotHole central Pa!!!
It also grates as to how many innovators in IT never bothered, or specifically didn’t coral and patent what they considered proper in the public domain. I cite Donald Knuth in particular.
This topic concerns me greatly, some intellectual property rights directly affect me. However the question is not really whether there should be any patents at all but whether the current regime is right or fair. It is a broad and complex topic and one that shoud avoid online flame wars but it is hard to do that.
My own thinking on this has come to a halt, I have no blueprint that would protect say DEVONthink 3 guys and free us from the ‘patent jockeys’ in Pharma, Disney and elsewhere… We need a serious attack on the problem in my view drawing on many sources and resources. What democracy is for, however the discussion soon spills over into broader concerns I have found.
1 Like
I have to say, as an Apple fan boi I have enjoyed my watch but really ‘meh’. I have already made a long comment here and don’t want to pontificate, I agree with you really. Since I eschew the so called ‘health and fitness’ aspects of the watch but do find silent notifications useful, that’s about it, I have no real skin in the patent aspects. I might not even replace my watch when it ‘dies’ in fact.
In general I do feel the balance regarding patents and so on is wrong and tilted way too much to those with lawyers and money and against the public interest.
One would need some serious resources to take on the “House of Mouse” 
1 Like
And there it is, Masimo has their own watching coming out. I am sure there are a set of people who want this type of watch, but this seems like a major risk for them. Blood O2 wasn’t great on Apple or Garmin, but it’s not that handy of a metric. The big players (except Samsung and Whoop) have all nailed heart rate long ago, so no one is really looking for more accuracy there.
Since they sued Apple, they now get tech media coverage for it. It would be hilarious if Apple finds some patent to sue them over now.
1 Like
That has already happened. This dispute has been going on for 10 years, but this latest round was started when Apple sued Massimo.
Indeed. Good one, it is mind boggling really.
As I recall Masimo has already spent $100 Million on this dispute. So they must definitely believe they are the aggrieved party.
Masimo’s HQ is now located in a glass-front 213,400 square-foot building that was used as the fictional headquarters of Stark Industries in the final “I am Ironman” scene. 
1 Like
Masimo is claiming to compete on sensor quality and software methods to reduce noise/bad data, not sampling rate, right?
There was some mention in the article about sampling rate but I haven’t seen Masimo make claims about their approach being more power efficient. If their OS is simpler, they could spend battery on the sensors, but (I think) not enough to achieve an order of magnitude more precision just from sampling rate. My understanding, anyway.
Here is the DC Rainmaker (popular sports tech writer/YouTuber) article on it. Not really any further info, but one thing he mentions that I really don’t understand:
Well, obviously, buyers of new Apple Watch Series 9/Ultra 2 units don’t have blood oximetry data – a feature virtually every other wearable company has – be it Fitbit, Samsung, Google, Polar, Garmin, COROS, Suunto, etc… Everyone. Now, whether or not those companies simply did a better job avoiding existing patent pitfalls, came to a licensing agreement with Masimo, or weren’t a big enough targets for Masimo to sue, etc… we don’t know, and is probably a blend of a number of those factors.
Some other big players. I guess because, as @WayneG said, Apple started it?
Another interesting tidbit: Masimo is being sued by another company for infringing on their wrist based O2 patent.
Apple to Sell Apple Watch Ultra 2 & Series 9 Tomorrow without Blood Oxygen Feature (dcrainmaker.com)