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Peripheral perfusion basically means amount of oxygenated blood reaching the "furthest" points of the body - hands, legs, fingers, toes. Some people naturally have poor perfusion to the extremities because of heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, COPD and etc. Hence the using of pulse oximetry on some of these people can return very dismal results in terms of SpO2 saturations. Cold fingers can also result in poor results (especially with older patients who have reduced metabolic rate and the body naturally conserve heat to the core by constricting vascularity to the extremities and hence decreased blood supply and heat lost.

The test of squeezing someone's nail bed and calculating how fast it returns to colour from white is nowadays seldom used. It has its merits but are generally used only in testing perfusion to the extremities if the patient is on some form of compression stockings and we are to ensure that the fit is adequate and not overly tight to cause impaired circulation.

Hope this little bit helps...lol. Good luck

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Tracey_Lee (offline) Joined: Sep 2010 Location: Posts: 29	Sun May 27, 2012 4:05 pm Could someone please explain peripheral perfusion to me? For some reason I just can't make it sink in. Thanks Nurse Tracey :-)

Schizo (offline) Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Posts: 239	May 28, 2012, 09:28 am Peripheral perfusion basically means amount of oxygenated blood reaching the "furthest" points of the body - hands, legs, fingers, toes. Some people naturally have poor perfusion to the extremities because of heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, COPD and etc. Hence the using of pulse oximetry on some of these people can return very dismal results in terms of SpO2 saturations. Cold fingers can also result in poor results (especially with older patients who have reduced metabolic rate and the body naturally conserve heat to the core by constricting vascularity to the extremities and hence decreased blood supply and heat lost. The test of squeezing someone's nail bed and calculating how fast it returns to colour from white is nowadays seldom used. It has its merits but are generally used only in testing perfusion to the extremities if the patient is on some form of compression stockings and we are to ensure that the fit is adequate and not overly tight to cause impaired circulation. Hope this little bit helps...lol. Good luck

Tracey_Lee (offline) Joined: Sep 2010 Location: Posts: 29	May 28, 2012, 11:50 am Thank you very much for your response. Finally I get it! Ha! Thankyou for taking the time.

Nursing issues

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