THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT COLORS OF NAIL POLISH ON OXYGEN SATURATION MEASURED BY PULSE OXIMETRY IN HEALTHY GIRLS

According to widespread use of pulse oximetry as the most common method of monitoring arterial hemoglobin oxygen saturation, it is very important to identify the factors that may interfere with this continuous monitoring. One of the things that can distort the result of this monitoring is the use of nail polish. As there was no consensus in previous studies, the present study was performed to investigate the effect of different colors of nail polish on the pulse oximetry values of healthy volunteer girls.

The present study was a prospective cross-sectional study on 90 healthy female volunteers by convenience sampling method. 8 color nail polishes of blue, green, purple, brown, black, yellow, red, and glitter were applied in two layers and then the arterial blood oxygen level of each finger was measured and recorded separately for each volunteer. One finger of each hand was considered as a control finger without varnish. Data analysis was performed by Wilcoxon signed-rank test using SPSS-22 software.

Among the polishes, green color showed the lowest (96%) and glitter showed the highest (97.06) mean arterial hemoglobin oxygen saturation in the pulse oximetry. Blue had the highest (96.06 ± 2.81) and yellow had the lowest (96.86 ±1.14) standard deviation.

The results of this study showed that different colors of nail polish have different effects on measuring oxygen saturation of arterial blood. Green, blue, and black interfered with the measurements, but other colors did not have a significant effect.