“We wanted to know: when the pulse oximeter is measuring between 92 and 96%, how often is the oxygen saturation actually less than 88% on arterial blood gas?” says Sjoding, adding that a reading of below 88% is generally where most physicians start to take notice and intervene.īlack patients were three times as likely to have a significant discrepancy in these readings. Using data from patients hospitalized at Michigan Medicine and an older dataset of patients hospitalized in multiple intensive care units across the country, the research team compared results from pulse oximeters and arterial blood gas measurements in patients who identified as either Black or white. As he and his colleagues cared for critically ill patients with COVID-19, a significant percentage of whom were Black, they noted a reoccurring discrepancy between readings from the pulse oximeter and a measurement from an arterial blood gas, which measures oxygen saturation directly through a blood test.
“These results really surprised all of us,” says Michael Sjoding, M.D., assistant professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. However, a new study by Michigan Medicine researchers finds that the pulse oximeter may be less accurate in Black patients than in white patients. Thousands of times a day, doctors and nurses use a small device called a pulse oximeter-which fits on the end of a patient’s finger to measure the percentage of oxygen in the blood-to help them make vital treatment decisions. Education, Training & Faculty Development.National Clinician Scholars Program at IHPI.
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