Ken and Vera Brooks have been married for 43 years, but Dec. 10 marked just the second time in their marriage they picked up a box of groceries at the Travis County Exposition Center, the nearest Central Texas Food Bank distribution site to their home. We re both retired and with the way the economy is rent and everything kind of high we come here for food, Vera Brooks said. It helps a lot.
They went through an intake process before weaving through the parking lot toward masked volunteers who placed a cardboard box labeled disaster relief into their trunk.
The Brooks box included milk, potatoes, onions, spaghetti sauce, fresh produce and other canned goods that would get them through the month.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: The common fingertip devices that measure oxygen in the blood are increasingly finding their way into people s homes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. These pulse ox devices can sometimes give misleading readings, though, in people with dark skin. That s according to a new study. NPR science correspondent Richard Harris reports.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: When Detroit s hospitals started to overflow with COVID patients earlier this year, some patients ended up at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And as Dr. Michael Sjoding started treating this influx of largely Black patients, he started noticing something odd about the results from the fingertip device called a pulse oximeter.
Angus Mordant / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Originally published on December 16, 2020 1:24 pm
The common fingertip devices that measures oxygen in the blood can sometimes give misleading readings in people with dark skin, according to a report Wednesday in
The New England Journal of Medicine.
These devices, called pulse oximeters, are increasingly finding their way into people s homes, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, this is not just a concern for medical personnel using professional-grade devices.
Dr. Michael Sjoding and colleagues at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor came across this issue this year when they received an influx of COVID-19 patients from Detroit s overflowing hospitals. Many of these patients are Black. Sjoding noticed something odd about results from the fingertip device used throughout hospitals.
A paramedic uses a pulse oximeter to check a patient s vital signs during an August home visit in the Bronx borough of New York. Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Devices Used In COVID-19 Treatment Can Give Errors For Patients With Dark Skin By
at 2:01 pm NPR
The common fingertip devices that measures oxygen in the blood can sometimes give misleading readings in people with dark skin, according to a report Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
These devices, called pulse oximeters, are increasingly finding their way into people s homes, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, this is not just a concern for medical personnel using professional-grade devices.
Devices Used In COVID-19 Treatment Can Give Errors For Patients With Dark Skin
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
A paramedic uses a pulse oximeter to check a patient s vital signs during an August home visit in the Bronx borough of New York.
Angus Mordant / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The common fingertip devices that measures oxygen in the blood can sometimes give misleading readings in people with dark skin, according to a report Wednesday in
The New England Journal of Medicine.
These devices, called pulse oximeters, are increasingly finding their way into people s homes, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, this is not just a concern for medical personnel using professional-grade devices.