{"id":614364,"date":"2026-09-28T14:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614364\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T14:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:22:10","slug":"birmingham-study-tests-ear-oxygen-monitoring-over-fingertip-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614364\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham study tests ear oxygen monitoring over fingertip checks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research had raised concerns <\/a>that monitors could overestimate oxygen levels in people with darker skin pigmentation, particularly when oxygen levels were already low.<\/p>\n

“We’ve known for some time that the monitors or probes that we use to measure oxygen in patients can be inaccurate at times in patients who have darker or different [skin] pigments,” said Dr Dhruv Parekh, a Consultant in Critical Care and Respiratory Medicine.<\/p>\n

That did not mean fingertip oximeters were considered unsafe in normal clinical use, as doctors and nurses had generally used them alongside other observations and tests, rather than relying on a single reading alone.<\/p>\n

But the limitations had become particularly important when people were monitoring themselves at home.<\/p>\n

During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, patients had increasingly used pulse oximeters without a clinician beside them.<\/p>\n

“What recent studies have shown, is when you’re unwell, it may show that in people with darker [skin] pigments are being falsely reassured that their oxygen levels are better than they are”, Parekh said.<\/p>\n

He added: “We need to ensure that when we are showing whether oximeter’s work in people, that they work across the board, not just in white Caucasian people, but across all different [skin] pigments and backgrounds and ethnicities.”<\/p>\n

As a result, researchers started to investigate if oxygen levels could be measured in a different way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research had raised concerns that monitors could overestimate oxygen levels in people with darker skin pigmentation, particularly when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-614364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}