Hi there,

Based only on a few I've had the pleasure of cutting apart, the broken sheath conducts water that follows the cable into the top of the sensor which eventually migrates into the core. It swells with rust and changes its magnetic properties making the signal weaker before it dies altogether. The swelling also will make it tough to remove from the lightweight aluminum bracket, if it goes on too long.

What I don't know is what improvement was made to the manufacture that prompted the yellow tape to be changed to white as evidence of the revised, and supposedly immune version. I'm not willing to sacrifice any of those to necropsy. Some searching of this site will turn up other scope traces showing the signal measured back at the ICU input pin.




--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, it isn't the end.