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Information about Vital Sign

This article is about vital signs in medicine. For other uses of the term, see Vital signs (disambiguation).


Vital signs are often taken by health professionals in order to assess the most basic body functions. Vital signs are an essential part of a case presentation.

Primary four

There are four vital signs which are standard in most medical settings:
  1. Body Temperature
  2. Pulse rate (or heart rate)
  3. Blood pressure
  4. Respiratory rate


The equipment needed is a thermometer, a sphygmomanometer, and a watch.

Though a pulse can often be taken by hand, a stethoscope may be required for a patient with a very weak pulse.

Additional signs

Fifth sign

The phrase "fifth vital sign" usually refers to pain, as perceived by the patient on a Pain scale of 0-10. For example, the Veterans Administration made this their policy in 1999. However, some doctors have noted that pain is actually a subjective symptom, not an objective sign, and therefore object to this classification.[1]

Other sources include pulse oximetry as their fifth sign.[2][3][4]

Some sources consider pupil size, equality, and reactivity to light to be a vital sign as well.[5]

Sixth sign

There is no standard "sixth vital sign", and the use is much more informal and discipline-dependent than with the above, but some proposals (excluding the fifth sign candidates above) include:

Variations by age

Children and infants have respiratory and heart rates that are faster than those of adults as shown in the following table:
Age Normal heart rate
(beats per minute)[12]		 Normal respiratory rate
(breaths per minute)[13]
Newborn120-16030-50
0-5 months90-14025-40
6-12 months80-14020-30
1-3 years80-13020-30
3-5 years80-12020-30
6-10 years70-11015-30
11-14 years60-10512-20
14+ years60-10012-20

See also

References

1. ^ Harold S. Lee. November 2004. Physical Diagnosis 101: A Lesson From the First Year of Medical School, in Letters to the Editor. American Society of Anesthesiologists, Volume 68, Number 11.
2. ^ Mower W, Myers G, Nicklin E, Kearin K, Baraff L, Sachs C (1998). "Pulse oximetry as a fifth vital sign in emergency geriatric assessment". Acad Emerg Med 5 (9): 858-65. PMID 9754497. 
3. ^ Mower W, Sachs C, Nicklin E, Baraff L (1997). "Pulse oximetry as a fifth pediatric vital sign". Pediatrics 99 (5): 681-6. PMID 9113944. 
4. ^ Neff T (1988). "Routine oximetry. A fifth vital sign?". Chest 94 (2): 227. PMID 3396392. 
5. ^ Daniel Limmer and Michael F. O'Keefe. 2005. Emergency Care 10th ed. Edward T. Dickinson, Ed. Pearson, Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Page 212 and 218.
6. ^ Joseph A (2003). "Continence: the sixth vital sign?". Am J Nurs 103 (7): 11. PMID 12865635. 
7. ^ Vardi A, Levin I, Paret G, Barzilay Z (2000). "The sixth vital sign: end-tidal CO2 in pediatric trauma patients during transport". Harefuah 139 (3-4): 85-7, 168. PMID 10979461. 
8. ^ Bultz B, Carlson L (2006). "Emotional distress: the sixth vital sign--future directions in cancer care". Psychooncology 15 (2): 93-5. PMID 16444764.  link
9. ^ [1]
10. ^ [2]
11. ^ Bierman A (2001). "Functional status: the sixth vital sign". J Gen Intern Med 16 (11): 785-6. PMID 11722694.  link
12. ^ Emergency Care, Page 214
13. ^ Emergency Care, Page 215

External links

Vital Signs may refer to:
  • Vital signs are basic measures of health frequently examined in medicine.
  • Vital Signs (pop band), a rock band from Pakistan
  • Vital Signs (television series), a British television show

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A health care provider or health professional is an organization or person who delivers proper health care in a systematic way professionally to any individual in need of health care services.
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A case presentation is a formal communications between health care professionals (doctors, nurses, therapists, nutrientist etc.) regarding a patient's clinical information.
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Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when temperature surrounding is very different. This process is one aspect of homeostasis: a dynamic state of stability between an animal's internal environment and its
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In medicine, a person's pulse is the throbbing of their arteries as an effect of the heart beat. It can be felt at the neck (carotid artery), at the wrist (radial artery), behind the knee (Popliteal artery), on the inside of the elbow (Brachial artery), near the ankle joint
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Heart rate is a term used to describe the frequency of the cardiac cycle. It is considered one of the four vital signs. Usually it is calculated as the number of contractions (heart beats) of the heart in one minute and expressed as "beats per minute" (bpm).
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Blood pressure (strictly speaking: vascular pressure) refers to the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels, and constitutes one of the principal vital signs.
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respiratory rate (or respiration rate) is the number of breaths a living being, such as a human, takes per minute.

There is only limited research on monitoring alien respiratory rate, and these studies have focused on such issues as the inaccuracy of respiratory rate
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contradict the article Timeline of temperature and pressure measurement technology. Please see discussion on the linked talk page.
A thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient, using a variety of different principles.
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A sphygmomanometer (often condensed to sphygmometer [1] ) or blood pressure meter is a device used to measure blood pressure, comprising an inflatable cuff to restrict blood flow, and a mercury or mechanical manometer to measure the pressure.
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This article may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since September 2007.

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The stethoscope (Greek στηθοσκόπιο, of στήθος, stéthos - chest and σκοπή, skopé - examination
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Pain is a sensation transmitted from sensory nerves through the spinal cord and to the sensory area of the cerebrum, where the sensation is perceived. It is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional
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Pain scales are tools that can help health care providers diagnose or measure a patients pain's intensity. The most widely used scales are visual, verbal, numerical or some combination of all three forms.
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United States
Department of Veterans Affairs

Seal of the Department of Veterans Affairs
Agency overview
Formed October 25, 1988

Employees 235,000+ (2006)
Annual Budget $73.
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The term symptom (from the Greek σύμπτωμα meaning 'chance', 'mishap' or 'casualty', itself derived from συμπιπτω
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Simply, a sign is an indication of some fact or quality; and, in everyday English, a medical sign is an "objective" indication of some medical fact or quality that is detected by a physician during a physical examination of a patient—such as elevated
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pulse oximeter is a medical device that indirectly measures the oxygen saturation of a patient's blood (as opposed to measuring oxygen saturation directly through a blood sample) and changes in blood volume in the skin, producing a photoplethysmograph.
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The pupil (Latin pupilla "little doll" > pupa "doll") is the variable-sized, black circular or slit shaped opening in the center of the iris that regulates the amount of light that enters the eye.
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Incontinence is used in Medicine and Philosophy.

Medicine

Incontinence is the lack of voluntary control of excretory functions; the term is a contraction of a complete expression, such as "incontinence of urine" or "incontinence of feces".
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Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state.
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The word distress has various meanings:-
  • Distress is a kind of suffering.
  • In medicine, distress is stress caused by adverse events.
  • In Maritime and Aircraft terms, distress is defined as "grave and imminent danger to life or person or vessel or aircraft,

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Spirometry (meaning the measuring of breath) is the most common of the Pulmonary Function Tests (PFTs), measuring lung function, specifically the measurement of the amount (volume) and/or speed (flow) of air that can be inhaled and exhaled.
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Glucose (Glc), a monosaccharide (or simple sugar), is an important carbohydrate in biology. The living cell uses it as a source of energy and metabolic intermediate.
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Oxygen saturation is a relative measure of the amount of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium. It can be measured with a dissolved oxygen probe such as an oxygen sensor or an optode in liquid media, usually water.
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Intracranial pressure, (ICP), is the pressure exerted by the cranium on the brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and the brain's circulating blood volume. ICP is a dynamic phenomenon constantly fluctuating in response to activities such as exercise, coughing, straining,
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Biotelemetry (or Medical Telemetry) involves the application of telemetry in the medical field to remotely monitor various vital signs of ambulatory patients.

Application


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