1/2 #medicalbias #bias #racialbias #medicaldevices #skincolor #pulseoxymetry
COVID-19 highlighted the fact that skin pigmentation alters measurements. Sjoding et al.published a retrospective report showing that pulse oximeters overestimate the true oxygen saturation of Black people. This inaccuracy means that diagnoses of hypoxaemia, the condition of having low levels of oxygen in one’s blood, are ~3X more likely to be missed in Black than in white patients.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03161-1