An Ann Arbor doctor is being credited with research that could change the way oxygen levels are registered for people of color.
It was during the height of COVID, when patients from the Detroit area were being transferred to the University of Michigan medical facility that pulmonologist and internal medicine professor Michael Sjoding started noticing some serious discrepancies between the severity of patient’s breathing and how they registered their oxygen levels on the pulse oximeter. That’s the little clip put on a finger to measure oxygen levels.
For some of these patients, he requested blood work to determine their actual blood/oxygen levels. And he found that patients with dark skin color had more false readings than those with light skin color.
“The pulse oximeter missing serious low oxygen two or three times as often in Black patients.
That research is now in the hands of the FDA, which is now contemplating new regulations in how pulse oximeters are designed and tested.
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