Pulse Oximeter: How It can Improve Health Outcomes
According to the latest
studies conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF, more or less
6 million kids ages five and below died in 2015 alone. In low-income and
developing countries, the mortality rate in kids or early childhood is dominated
by sepsis, pneumonia or prematurity – diseases that usually result in hypoxemic
respiratory arrest.
Since the introduction of
pulse oximetry into the medical practice in the early 80s, it has been used in
high-income or developed countries. It is starting to get popular in the
management and diagnosis of childhood diseases, in middle to low-resource
settings.
To know more about hypoxic
respiratory arrest, visit https://www.healthline.com/health/acute-respiratory-failure for more
information.
There is an inherent
appeal of point-of-care medical devices like the pulse oximeter to help detect
hypoxemia, especially in first-level health facilities staffed by health care
providers with little experience and training. But it is an excellent way to
examine all the evidence when it comes to the use of a pulse oximeter in
clinical management, as well as in the effects on outcomes, especially in cases
of childhood pneumonia.
In this article, we will
evaluate the underlying evidence that the pulse oximeter can make a big
difference in child management. At least five researches met the criteria for
involvement in its systematic review, all before or after studies.
Only one of these researches
was conducted in low-income countries since the heterogeneity in these research
outcomes and designs. Most of the researches’ authors are not able to do
meta-analysis, but instead summarized all the findings qualitatively.
To find out more about this
topic, read
more here.
One research conducted a
study that checked the effects of introducing the device, as well as oxygen
concentrators on pneumonia-related related death in developing countries like
Papua New Guinea. Improving hypoxemia detection and treating the disease before
it hits a critical level reduces pneumonia death by at least 35{ae514a3737d85ea64aeb2cb88bf523835c3e1315e3b3c65ffee7dd6cf13b9d2b}.
Based on their studies, a
risk reduction of at least 1.5{ae514a3737d85ea64aeb2cb88bf523835c3e1315e3b3c65ffee7dd6cf13b9d2b}, the number of patients needed to test the
device and treat the disease with the help of supplemental oxygen in order to
help save one life was 57. It is a game-changing treatment for a condition that
is killing more or less a million children every year.
Notably, part of the
observed reduction in these deaths can also be related to the overall
improvement of the care received by patients in the quality improvement scheme.
Each year, there are at least a million hypoxemic pneumonia episodes that
require hospitalization all over the world.
And even though oxygen is
on the critical medicine list of the World Health Organization, patients in
district hospitals and other referral hospitals in developing countries in Asia
and Africa are unlikely to get oxygen treatment because of the lack of
consistent supply of necessary oxygen. It is tough to imagine that introducing
pulse oximetry into the context can help improve the outcome of pneumonia in
children.
According to researches,
knowledge of the oxygen
saturation that was associated with changes in clinical management, in
some cases, escalation of care like administration of treatment and admission
to a health care institution.
In other cases, the
oximeter findings are very reassuring and it can lead to lessen the
responsibility of health care providers. The results are very intuitive and not
surprising, but it demonstrates that medical professionals find the details
generated by the oximeter useful in supervising the patients.
According to studies, the
pulse oximeter can improve the outcome of children suffering hypoxemia who
needs oxygen. For the family of the patients suffering from prematurity,
pneumonia or sepsis, it is an excellent new treatment, but to reap all the
benefits it can offer, we need t find a way to make sure that when the device
detects hypoxemia using the device, there is a stable supply of oxygen to help
treat the disease.
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