Buying an Oximeter in Kathmandu?

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have experience of purchasing an oximeter (for measuring your blood O2 levels) in Kathmandu, and if so do you have any recommendations for places to purchase, estimated cost and recommended brands?

I've searched for 'oximeter' on these forums and others and can't seem to find much info, only a few people mentioning they'd purchased one at home before coming to Nepal.

If they are not too expensive I think it would be a worthy addition to our packs as my partner appears to struggle with acclimatisation more than me, it would be useful to see how are O2 levels compare throughout our trek.

Thanks

I'm wondering about oximeters. We tested ourselves at a 4500 meter lodge last year, and the person who had the worst result was ... the lodge attendant who had been there for 3 weeks.
So i'm afraid it may cause useless alarm to some people.

I can't say anything about buying an oximeter in Kathmandu. We brought one (from the USA), and it consistently showed my blood oxygen level as a little higher than my wife's -- and she was having a little harder time than I was. However, we are both "white", and this model apparently didn't work well on people with darker skin. If you believed the reading, our guide should have been unconscious -- blood oxygen saturation at about 60% (at rest, of course), when mine was about 80% at Lobuche. We didn't think to try it later on him when we returned to the "low lands", where everyone should be in the high 90s.

I doubt if you can find pulse oximeters for sale in Kathmandu. If you want one, bring from home.

We have had one on several trips (Ulugh Muztagh, Kilimanjaro, long treks), and the readings are quite consistent with other observations about people's acclimatisation levels. Combined with heart rate at rest -reading the oxygen level is actually a fairly good indicator of how a person is doing, and especially which way the adaptation is going.

That is food for thought, thank you both. Although some of the shops are still closed due to Dashain the few (more professional) shops that we popped into either didn't know what one was, and they certainly didn't sell them - it was more of a passing thought than anything.
Agreed that depending on the device it could give misleading results and cause unwarranted worry. Maybe I'll look into purchasing one at home for our next trip... (once is never enough!)

Staring at the oxygen reading alone can be misleading as people react differently*, but the direction and speed of change for the individual is a better indicator of what to expect. Heart rate during sleep (need a logging sports watch for that) is a good indicator of the acclimatisation level. Actually, for some unknown reason, the heart rate can be lower at altitude than at home. My lowest nightly heart rates were measured at 5200 meters, 47 beats per minute. Never so low at home.

*) naturally if one has 87% and the other 67% there is no need to follow the change to say who is at risk. If the difference is only few % points then it is not so clear who is actually in better shape.

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