According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), more than 70 million Americans are affected by chronic sleep disorders. Sleep apnea is a very common yet serious sleep disorder where a person’s breathing is uncontrollably and repeatedly interrupted during sleep, resulting in very brief or prolonged periods of oxygen deprivation. Serious problems can result from the oxygen deprivation of sleep apnea—including: heart disease, high blood pressure and learning/memory problems—and, if left untreated, sleep apnea can be life-threatening.
Pulse oximetry is the standard method for assessing oxygenation in sleep testing and, as such, plays a critical role in treatment decisions, including whether to administer Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) therapy or perform surgery. Inaccurate pulse oximetry data can have serious implications because false pulse oximetry desaturations can lead to misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment or surgery, while missed true desaturations can prevent correct diagnosis and potentially lifesaving treatment. The new Rad-8 combines the unmatched sensitivity and specificity of Masimo SET Measure-Through Motion and Low-Perfusion pulse oximetry—clinically-proven to reduce false alarms by over 90% and increase capture of true desaturation events by 98%—with enhanced functionality to help clinicians better capture, analyze, and report vital oxygen saturation, pulse rate, and perfusion data for improved sleep disorder detection.
The superior fidelity of Masimo SET has been clinically-shown to outperform other pulse oximeters in the accurate identification and quantification of brief dips in oxygen saturation due to apneas and hypopneas—an important marker and measure of severity for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) diagnosis and treatment. In fact, previous research conducted at Montreal Children’s Hospital in Quebec found that using a Masimo pulse oximeter with very short averaging time was not only more accurate in detecting true desaturation events, including brief dips in oxygen saturation as well as larger ones, but could also significantly reduce workload and improve reliability of desaturation detection over other pulse oximeters. Study findings confirmed that Masimo detected 98.6% of true desaturations, while the N-395 detected only 45.3%, leading researchers to conclude that the sensitivity and motion artifact rejection characteristics of the Nellcor N-395 oximeter are not adequate for a pediatric sleep laboratory setting.
And, based on clinician input, Rad-8 now features an intuitive user-interface and easy menu navigation to save time and enable faster, easier set-up, and operation, while one-touch quick access buttons allow clinicians to engage special features in an instant. New user-selectable alarm settings make it quick and easy for clinicians to set and save configurations for specific patient monitoring needs and unique clinical applications. In addition, 72-hour trending, configurable Sleep and Home modes, and enhanced data collection/reporting compatibility make the new Rad-8 the ideal patient monitoring solution for sleep center, home, sub-acute, and transport applications.
