Dangerously wrong oxygen readings in dark-skinned patients spur FDA scrutiny

The 3x more likely study was troubling. If I read correctly, 11% of darker-skinned patients reading 92-96% were below 88% when measured arterially, compared to about 4% of lighter-skinned patients. The conventional wisdom I’ve heard is to subtract 3-5% for dark skin when the reading is below 90%, and that wouldn’t be sufficient.

And somehow this is entirely unrelated to the stigma associated with researching anything that has to do with race.</sarcasm>

I knew the HN comments would be disappointing on this topic.

<i>”For years, studies have found racial bias in common oxygen-measuring devices called pulse oximeters”</i><p>This writing is terrible. How is a meter biases against “race”? Does the meter give an incorrect reading for a light skinned black person but a better reading for a dark skinned white person of the same color?