https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/well/live/coronavirus-pulse-oximeter-oxygen.html
A tiny fingertip
device can give you valuable information about your health during a bout
of Covid-19 or any respiratory illness.
Health officials
are divided on whether home monitoring with a pulse oximeter should be
recommended on a widespread basis during Covid-19. Studies of
reliability show mixed results, and there’s little guidance on how to
choose one. But many doctors are advising patients to get one, making it
the go-to gadget of the pandemic. We’ve answered common questions about
the device, how it works and what to do with the information it gives
you.
Too early to know for sure. It's like the loss of sense of smell. In some patients it's the first or maybe only symptoms of CoVID but lots of patients get sick and still have their sense of smell.
ReplyDeleteWhere it might be useful is in screening to get into public buildings or for travel. Part of the protocol for checking into a flight, for example, might be having your smell tested, then getting your temperature checked and finally doing the pulse ox with the hope that if all three are normal you are good to go.
Screening measures like this are absolutely critical going forward if we want to have any hope of containing transmission
ReplyDeletei know that you're a respected physician, but you have a minor but important error here. the pulse-ox is useful in comparison to previous readings. if oxygen saturation drops you're in trouble. but if i'm at 97 and you're at 94 it means nothing at all.. i've been testing all my patients just to see if there's a pattern. there isn't, which is not at all surprising
ReplyDeleteYou're right but according to the case reports out of New York we're looking at numbers in the 70's and 80's. Normally people with an O2 sat less than 90% are obvious short of breath but for reasons unexplained, some CoVID patients walk around with sat's way before 90% and other than a faster respiratory rate, they feel fine.
ReplyDeleteSo the scenario would be a guy showing up for a flight, reporting no symptoms and having a resting sat of 75%.
Pretty much irrelevant, as it's close to impossible to acquire one of these -- at least one that's reasonably accurate. All that's available are units of dubious quality.
ReplyDelete