NYT overview article
The analysis, of 10,789 paired test results from 1,333 white patients and 276 Black patients hospitalized at the University of Michigan earlier this year, found that pulse oximetry overestimated oxygen levels 3.6 percent of the time in white patients, but got it wrong nearly 12 percent of the time, or more than three times more often, in Black patients.
In these patients, the pulse oximeter measures erroneously indicated the oxygen saturation level was between 92 and 96 percent, when it was actually as low as 88 percent (the results were adjusted for age, sex and cardiovascular disease).
Oxygen levels below 95 percent are considered abnormal, so “a small difference in pulse oximetry value in this range of 92 to 96 percent could be the difference in deciding whether the patient is really sick or not really sick, or needs different treatment or not,” Dr. Sjoding said.
On planetary change and human health
December 19, 2020MIT
MIT anthropologist Amy Moran-Thomas reflects on the deep connection between planetary and human well-being.
When anthropologist Amy Moran-Thomas first went to Belize to begin ethnographic research in 2008, she planned to chronicle human health concerns, focusing on diabetes. Then she learned that local diets contributing to such chronic conditions were changing, in part due to losses in ocean food webs, and kept hearing stories about how local plants were in trouble.
“Listening and trying to learn from what people were saying, over the years I came to see human health and planetary health as deeply interconnected,” says Moran-Thomas, the Morrison Hayes Career Development Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT. “When I think of health now, I think of disarray in bigger ecosystems and infrastructures that’s also landing in human bodies.”
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