<story><title>Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin</title><url>https://bostonreview.net/science-nature-race/amy-moran-thomas-how-popular-medical-device-encodes-racial-bias</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>treis</author><text>This really isn&amp;#x27;t a big deal.  Doctors know that these pulse ox meters aren&amp;#x27;t very accurate and use them accordingly.  Nobody&amp;#x27;s changing their plan because you have a pulse ox of 93 instead of 95.  They&amp;#x27;re there to quickly measure big changes that indicate a problem.  In other words, they&amp;#x27;re looking for patients going from 98 to 75, not 98 to 95.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tashi</author><text>My insurance company didn&amp;#x27;t authorize a full sleep study because my overnight pulse oximeter results were normal, so it took me an extra couple of years to find out I needed a CPAP machine. It might have helped to know that my skin color could cause inaccurate results.</text></comment>
<story><title>Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin</title><url>https://bostonreview.net/science-nature-race/amy-moran-thomas-how-popular-medical-device-encodes-racial-bias</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>treis</author><text>This really isn&amp;#x27;t a big deal.  Doctors know that these pulse ox meters aren&amp;#x27;t very accurate and use them accordingly.  Nobody&amp;#x27;s changing their plan because you have a pulse ox of 93 instead of 95.  They&amp;#x27;re there to quickly measure big changes that indicate a problem.  In other words, they&amp;#x27;re looking for patients going from 98 to 75, not 98 to 95.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>in_cahoots</author><text>That hasn’t been true at all in my experience.  When my son got pneumonia, we were told he would be hospitalized at 92 when he was reading 94.  He’s dark-skinned so who knows what the actual reading should have been.</text></comment>