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Assessment of Pulse Oximetry Accuracy in Detecting Hypoxemia in COVID-19 Pneumonia Patients: A Cohort Study
AUTHORS: Amalakanti Sridhar, Kesava Venkata Raman Arepalli, Sri Harsha Boppana, Jyothi Priya Jillella
JASPI December 2023/ Volume 1/Issue 1
Copyright: © Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Sridhar A, Arepalli KVR, Boppana HS, Illella JP. Assessment of Pulse Oximetry Accuracy in Detecting Hypoxemia in COVID-19 Pneumonia Patients: A Cohort Study. JASPI. 2023;1(1):9 – 11 DOI: 10.62541/jaspi004
ABSTRACT
The accuracy of pulse oximeters in diagnosing hypoxemia, especially in COVID-19 and other viral pneumonia cases, still needs to be determined despite their critical role in monitoring COVID-19 patients. This study aimed to assess the dependability of pulse oximeters in accurately detecting hypoxemia in individuals with COVID-19 pneumonia. A study was undertaken on 40 patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, in which pulse oximeter results were compared to arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis. The results of our study demonstrate a continuous overestimation of 1.77% in pulse oximetry values compared to arterial blood gas (ABG) measurements. When the threshold for SpO2 was set at less than 90%, the sensitivity and specificity were found to be 50% and 76.09%, respectively. These values slightly improved when the threshold was set at less than 92% for SpO2. The findings underscore notable constraints in utilizing pulse oximetry to identify low oxygen levels in COVID-19 pneumonia patients. This emphasizes the importance of interpreting oximeter values cautiously and advocating for more precise techniques, such as arterial blood gas (ABG) measurement, in severe situations.