Blood oxygen measurements taken with pulse oximeters in hospitals tend to be lower than they really are, according to the Equiox study, which was designed to assess the technology’s measurement capabilities in people with various skin tones.
“In a real-world study of critically-ill patients, the performance [of pulse oximeters] was worse than regulatory guidance standards,” said Carolyn Hendrickson, MD, a pulmonologist at the University of California San Francisco, and the study’s first author.
Regulators set standards that capture overestimation, underestimation, and precision, but the devices used did not meet these standards, said Hendrickson, who presented the findings at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Scientific Session 2025 in Chicago.
The data showed…