What Are the Vitals?

I'll be posting an update soon when I get a hold of someone with a medical background from the hospital. I slept in super late (and it feels good!) so I am not down there writing down exactly what the doctors say. I am waiting for Dr. Addington (Md., TJ's father and formerly chief of staff at United) to give me a call and confirm what I have heard second hand.

In the meantime I realized that there are probably some things that could be clarified when it comes to the language used on this blog, especially vitals.

There are three vital signs that we watch carefully, heart rate (usually mistakenly called the pulse), oxygen saturation, and blood pressure.

There is a resting heart rate and an active heart rate. According the American Heart Association a "normal" resting heart rate is between 60-80, but it rises as you get older. A "true" resting heart beat can only be measured while one is asleep, which is close enough to TJ's condition. Active (or target) heart rates depend on the physical activity you are undertaking (walking, running, swimming, whatever) and age.

The oxygen saturation ("sats" as they are called around the hospital) is aka measure of how much oxygen the blood is carrying. To quote WebMd:

O₂ content measures the amount of oxygen in the blood. Oxygen saturation measures how much of the hemoglobin in the red blood cells is carrying oxygen (O₂).

This is actually measured by putting a glowing red thing around TJ's finger. In the ICU they like this number around 92, Mary Ann says in normal circumstances it is 97. So when I say his "sats" are doing ok, it means it is at least 92.

Finally, the blood pressure. Historically (and still at most doctors' offices) you'll get a number somewhere around 120/70 (the "target" number, like most things, it changes from person to person). The top number is the pressure when they heart pumps, the bottom number when it doesn't. In the ICU they take the mean number ([120 + 70 * 2]/3 = 87)* called the mean atrial (sp?) pressure mean arterial pressure. In the ICU they worry when it drops into the 50's, and get increasingly worried as it approached 50.

They also measure breaths per minute (as opposed to Beat per minute for the heart rate, they are both bpm), which hasn't been a problem so I haven't asked a whole lot about it.

I hope that this give you all some idea on how to quantify and understand the vitals that are often posted. It also should give you a very good idea why we were scared when we watched the sats drop to 65 in a manner of seconds. Mary Ann thought we were watching a total repository failure. Follow the previous link if you aren't sure what I am referring too.

Hopefully more updates will follow soon. I am just waiting for confirmation, but so far things have been pretty good (on the ICU scale of good to bad).

*Updated 12/31/2007 to correct formula.