Reliability of cutaneous oxygen measurement by skin sensors with large-size cathodes.

The oxygen partial pressure may be measured cutaneously by directly heated PO2 sensors attached to the surface of the skin. The use of a large-size cathods (diameter 4 mm) allows one to obtain an average PO2 value over a sufficiently large skin area. The permeability of the membrane for oxygen has to be kept low to prevent a disturbance of the oxygen profile in the cutaneous tissue as a result of the oxygen consumption of the sensor. When using of 6 micrometer Mylar membrane, the current can be limited by the diffusion of oxygen through the membrane and is a measure of the arterialized cutaneous PO2. One effect of using membrane of low permeability is that the response time of the sensor is long (tau 90% = ca 45 sec). The reliability of correctly reproducing cPO2 variations by sensors having different response times may be evaluated by determining the transfer function of the membrane which allows the calculation of the frequency characteristics for various membranes. The cutaneous tissue layer also acts as a filter for rapid PO2 fluctuations. The characteristic of this filter is essentially similar to that of a "slow" membrane such as Myler 6 micrometer. The information gained by using a "rapid" membrane such as Telfon 13 micrometer is negligible. In 490 comparative measurements in newborns performed with sensors heated to 44 degree C, the correlation between arterial PO2 and cutaneously measured PO2 is significant (correlation coefficient = 0.934) and the regression line does not deviate significantly from the identity line.