For most people, a normal pulse oximeter reading is between 95% and 100%, with readings below 90-92% generally considered low and requiring medical attention. They are known to be affected by several ...

Fingertip Blood Oxygen Monitors Are Less Accurate For People Of Color, Study Finds By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Jan. 16, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Most everyone’s seen one in a doctor’s ...

The patient was in his 60s, an African American man with emphysema. The oximeter placed on his fingertip registered well above the 88% blood oxygen saturation level that signals an urgent risk of ...

In the EXAKT study from the U.K., the home-use pulse oximeters assessed all gave higher oxygen saturation (SpO2) readings for patients with darker skin tones than for patients with lighter skin tones.

In a suit filed against CVS, Walgreens, GE Healthcare and many other medical technology companies and sellers of pulse oximeters – devices that use light to measure oxygen saturation in the blood – ...

The patient was in his 60s, an African American man with emphysema. The oximeter placed on his fingertip registered well above the 88% blood oxygen saturation level that signals an urgent risk of ...

Dr. Takuo Aoyagi, a Japanese bioengineer, was the first to invent pulse oximetry in 1974. 2 The pulse oximeter is based on the light absorption characteristics of hemoglobin at different wavelengths.

Pulse oximetry was less accurate for people with darker skin tones in two studies, one regarding home-use devices and the other hospital-grade devices, although with some surprising differences ...