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 ...

-One of healthcare’s most fundamental tools works less reliably for people with darker skin tones. - An Oakland clinic’s lawsuit is helping to change that in California. The pulse oximeter, a device ...

The differences, or bias, between estimates of blood oxygen saturation levels as measured with pulse oximeters compared to the gold-standard method of measuring oxygen saturation in arterial blood ...

Tiffany Kinyua is a psychology major with a minor in biology and she is a 2025-26 health care ethics intern at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Views are her own.

Pulse oximeter devices routinely overestimate blood oxygen levels in darker-skinned patients—a racial bias that can trigger downstream health harms for Black individuals, compounding well beyond any ...