When my daughter returned to school this fall, I sent a care package that was perfect for a college student living through a pandemic. It included cookies, a coffee mug — and a pulse oximeter.
A pulse oximeter is a small device that clips on your finger and measures your blood oxygen levels. Even though my daughter and her friends are all vaccinated against Covid-19, I wanted her to have the device handy just in case she got a breakthrough infection.
Many people first learned about a pulse oximeter in the early days of the pandemic, after doctors warned that some patients with Covid-19 develop a form of oxygen deprivation called “silent hypoxia,” which occurs when blood oxygen levels drop so slowly that a patient doesn’t notice anything is wrong. Often these patients are so ill by the time they get to the hospital that they need to be put on a ventilator.
New research from South Africa shows that using a pulse oximeter to check oxygen levels after a Covid diagnosis really does save lives. For the study, 8,115 high-risk patients were given a pulse oximeter to use at home after Covid-19 was diagnosed. The study focused on the highest-risk patients, including older people, those who were pregnant or those with chronic illnesses like heart disease, hypertension or diabetes.