Health
If you have dark skin, the pulse oximeter used in COVID-19 treatment may cause an error.
Common fingertip devices that measure oxygen in the blood can give misleading measurements to people with dark skin. Reportedly Wednesday New England Journal of Medicine..
These devices, called pulse oximeters, are increasingly invading people’s homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this is not just a concern for healthcare professionals using professional devices.
Dr. Michael Shoding Colleagues at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor encountered this problem this year when they received an influx of COVID-19 patients from a Detroit-filled hospital. Many of these patients are black. Sjoding found something strange about the results of fingertip devices used throughout the hospital.
“We spit out this number, called oxygen saturation, which gives us an idea of how much oxygen is in the blood,” says Sjoding.
However, he found that oxygen measurements were sometimes off when compared to more sophisticated tests that sampled blood from human arteries. So Sjoding and his colleagues began collecting data and compared these measurements for light-skinned and dark-skinned people. They measured how often pulse oximeter measurements (clearly within normal limits) were actually obtained from people with hypoxia as measured in the arteries.
“We found this to happen much more often in black patients, basically about three times as often,” he says.
His first study was based on over 10,000 measurements made in his hospital. This is when a doctor measures oxygen from a pulse oximeter and blood from a person’s arteries at about the same time.
To validate that finding, he and his colleagues examined another 37,000 measurements taken from 178 intensive care units.
According to the report, with a probability of about 12%, apparently normal measurements were actually misleading.
“Not so often, but given how often these measurements are made, I’m worried that if there’s a 12% chance it’s wrong, it could really affect it,” Sjoding said. Mr. says.
And but Previous research Sjoding, who flagged this issue, said he didn’t think it was widely appreciated by ICU doctors. “I was really surprised when I performed these analyzes.” It’s becoming more and more important now that many people are buying pulse oximeters to monitor their health at home. ..
He believes that the reason behind this is that the color of light used in pulse oximeters can be absorbed by skin pigments.
Dr. Jewel MarenThe Dean of Health Inequalities at the University of Texas Del Medical School in Austin agrees that this discrepancy is about skin color, not race. She is concerned about the potential impact of this finding on people who may sometimes rely on consumer-grade pulse oximeter devices at home instead of medical care. Devices are still a valuable tool, but it’s important to see the results in some situations.
“Someone has a coronavirus and they are really short of breath, but they [an acceptable reading] —For example, 92% to 96% or higher oxygen saturation — they need to pay more attention to shortness of breath than measured oxygen, ”says Maren.
She says people should also pay attention to trends, not absolute readings. If a person’s oxygen levels drop significantly, they should be prompted to call their healthcare provider, even if the number is still in the “normal” zone.
Sjoding says pulse oximeters will continue to be important for hospitals, but he is currently thinking more carefully about how to interpret measurements.
You can contact NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris [email protected]..
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