Gardner R M, Hujcs M
AACN Clin Issues Crit Care Nurs. 1993 Feb;4(1):11-24.
For centuries, medical practitioners had no electronic medical instruments and had to rely on their senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to obtain physiologic measurements. Although it is possible to estimate blood pressure by palpating the pulse at the radial or brachial artery, such estimates are not accurate. Determining arterial oxygen saturation of hemoglobin is more complex: how "blue" a patient appears depends on skin coloration, lighting, and the examiner's sense of color. Finally, using radiographic images to validate pulmonary edema when clinicians suspect that there is an elevated left atrial or pulmonary artery wedge pressure also challenges human senses. However, today's medical instruments use transducers and signal processors to convert patient information into a form that clinicians can easily perceive and understand. This article defines terms used with biomedical instrumentation and discusses the components of ideal physiologic patient monitoring systems.
几个世纪以来，医学从业者没有电子医疗仪器，不得不依靠视觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉和触觉来获取生理测量数据。虽然通过触诊桡动脉或肱动脉的脉搏来估计血压是可行的，但这种估计并不准确。测定血红蛋白的动脉血氧饱和度更为复杂：患者看起来有多“蓝”取决于肤色、光照和检查者的色觉。最后，当临床医生怀疑左心房或肺动脉楔压升高时，使用X光影像来验证肺水肿也对人的感官构成挑战。然而，如今的医疗仪器使用传感器和信号处理器将患者信息转换为临床医生能够轻松感知和理解的形式。本文定义了生物医学仪器相关的术语，并讨论了理想的生理患者监测系统的组成部分。
