Medical Devices You Must keep at your Home

Hello guys, how are you? Dr Shounak here, hope you are doing great. Today I want to talk to you about a very important topic that you should follow in your life. Today I will give you a list of medical devices that you should keep at your home. 

As a doctor, I have seen medical emergencies that can be diagnosed at home and some basic treatments can be started early. I would always ask you to call an emergency service before doing anything yourself though. But early interventions almost always have less severity. Leave emergencies, you can even detect some diseases at early stages, some common but nasty diseases in long run, like diabetes(increased blood sugar), and hypertension ( increased bp). And early detection dramatically improves disease outcomes.

Keeping this in mind, here I will not only give you a list of devices to keep, but I will write a dedicated blog on how to use them and how to understand the result, and what to do next. Here I will restrict myself to tell you why you should keep them. (It was getting too long)

Here is my list of devices:

• BP Machine 
• Thermometer 
• CBG machine (glucometer)
• SpO2 monitor 

1. BP machine:  You should monitor your blood pressure once every month if your BP is normal. If not you should check it on weekly or daily basis. I would advise you to go for a digital BP monitor. Don't buy some cheap machine though. I personally use OMRON bp monitor. You can also buy others. Checking bp can help you detecting early hypertension. And sometimes hypertensive emergencies( when bo gets too high) , and help you act accordingly.

2.   Thermometer: It is another very basic instrument that every family should have . You can use good digital thermometer, or analogue Mercury Thermometer. I personally use HICK'S mercury thermometer. You should check your body temperature whenever you feel like you are having fever, chills , rigor( involuntary tremor). Document the temperature. Fever can go as high as 102-104°F in some condition. And in some other scenarios there can be low grade fevers 99-≤100°F. This documentation is important. You need to tell you doctor about your fever.

3. CBG (blood sugar) machine: Many people are sceptical about this as pevious generation machines used to give wrong results, but Now they generally gives very accurate results. All diabetic should have a CBG machine with them all the time. Increase in blood suger above 600mg/dl is a medical emergency. BUT  DECREASE in blood suger below 70 is a much bigger medical emergency. If some one gets unconscious, one of the very first thing you should look for should be the person's blood glucose level. It saves life.  I use Accusure CBG machine at I usually get a good result. Buy a good machine, although strips are more expensive in the long run.

4.SPO2 MONITOR ( PULSE OXIMETER) : Having a pulse oximeter is not super important, but it can be a good addition to your home medical kit. And it might sometimes come handy. Whenever you have a breathing trouble, you can check your oxygen saturation. It is much more important for peoples who are patients of asthma and copd. You will know when you need expert intervention.