Are Fingertip Oximeters Accurate on Dark Skin?
I just saw a post from TikTok school nurse who discovered that fingertip oxygen monitors (pulse ox) aren't accurate on dark skin. I know school nurse aren't experts in all areas, and my kid's school nurses were always frantic treating concussions, diabetes, broken bones, stomach flu, pink eye, lice, etc. So it's no wonder this nurse didn't hear about the problem with wrong readings on oxygen monitors. Pandemic discovery in 2020 The finding about the problem with finger tip oxygen monitors was discovered during the pandemic in spring of 2020. Doctors in a Detroit hospital in Ann Arbor noticed that their patients with dark skin seemed to have higher oxygen levels that didn't match the patient's symptoms. And that the oxygen level (pulse ox) didn't match the oxygen level during a blood draw from the artery (this is different from when they draw blood from a vein.) An arterial blood gas (ABG) draws blood from an artery to check ox...