Special Series: Racial Bias and Pulse Oximeters Part 1–A Problem Hiding in Plain Sight
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2024
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Pulse oximeters—devices used to read blood oxygen levels in hospitals and at home—are far less reliable for people with darker skin tones... Falsely normal readings create the potential for clinical staff to miss life-threatening conditions.
In this three-episode special series, we explore a longstanding issue that only caught the nation's attention in recent years. In episode 1: How COVID-19 shined a light on an issue that was known, but largely ignored.
Listen to Part 2: What Went Wrong?
Listen to Part 3: Fixing Pulse Oximeters.
View the transcript for this episode.
Host:
Annalies Winny is a co-producer of the Pulse Ox series for the Public Health On Call podcast, an associate editor for Global Health NOW, and a contributor for the Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health magazine.
Show links and related content:
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The Problem with Pulse Oximeters: A Long History of Racial Bias
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Estimating COVID-19 Hospitalizations in the U.S.—JMIR Public Health Surveillance
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How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias–Amy Moran-Thomas
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Racial Bias in Pulse Oximetry Measurement—The New England Journal of Medicine
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Dynamic in vivo response characteristics of three oximeters: Hewlett Packard 47201A, Biox III, and Nellcor N-100—Sleep (1987)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh. |
| 0:21.6 | JhU.edu. |
| 0:23.6 | That's Public Health Question at jhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:29.6 | Welcome to Public Health in the Field, a special series of our award-winning Public Health On Call podcast. |
| 0:35.6 | I'm producer Lindsay Smith-Rogers. |
| 0:38.4 | In this three-episode series, |
| 0:40.3 | we explore a long-standing issue |
| 0:42.2 | that only caught the nation's attention in recent years. |
| 0:45.5 | It's been widely noted that pulse oxymeters, |
| 0:48.7 | devices used to read blood oxygen levels in hospitals and at home, |
| 0:53.0 | are far less reliable for people of color, |
| 0:55.9 | and especially for darker-skinned patients than for white patients. |
| 1:00.1 | The error results in readings that are falsely normal, creating the potential for clinical |
| 1:04.9 | staff to miss life-threatening complications. |
| 1:07.9 | In the first episode of the series, Annalise Winnie and Nicole Germo delve into how COVID-19 shown a light on an issue that was known but largely ignored, and the history that led us to the flawed pulse oxymeters that are on the market today. |
| 1:22.6 | Here's Annalise Winnie. |
| 1:24.6 | Do you remember being a kid in a pool and seeing how long you could hold your breath |
| 1:29.6 | underwater? |
| 1:30.6 | It's not so hard for 10 seconds or even 30, but at one minute or two, your heart starts |
| 1:36.7 | to beat faster. |
... |
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