Respiratory Accessories

A jet nebulizer forces compressed air through a narrow opening in the medication cup, shattering the liquid into a fine aerosol. Droplets too large to inhale usefully strike an internal baffle and fall back into the reservoir to be re-atomized — only the fine mist escapes toward the mouthpiece.

A suction unit’s vacuum pump draws fluid through a catheter tip into a collection canister. The safety detail is the float valve: a ball that rises with the fluid level and seals the line before it reaches — and could damage — the pump motor.

Whether it clips on a fingertip for a spot check or sits on a finger all night as a ring, every pulse oximeter here works the same way: red and infrared light shine through tissue, and the ratio of what’s absorbed — which shifts with every heartbeat as arterial blood pulses through — is the entire measurement. The form factor changes; the physics underneath doesn’t.

Where accuracy holds up and where it doesn’t, in how pulse oximeters actually work.