Pulse oximeters When oxygen combines with haemoglobin it forms oxyhaemoglobin. The colour of the blood changes from dark red (unsaturated) to bright red (saturated). Before oximeters were invented, doctors relied on visual observation of the patient. When your blood is well oxygenated, your skin looks pink; but if you are seriously under-oxygenated, your skin will look bluish (a condition called cyanosis). It isn’t possible to tell exactly how oxygenated you are by the colour of your skin. in hospitals it is routine to use a pulse oximeter to monitor the oxygen saturation of the blood in patients. This involves a device like a peg that sits on the finger and measures the transmission of light through the tissues. The development of oximeters began in the 1930s and 1940s and the first pulse oximeter was designed in 1975. Pulse oximeters measure the amount of oxygen in arterial blood—that is, blood being pumped from the heart to the body cells (see Figure 1,30),