The oximeter like the thermometer: “One in every family to avoid pneumonia”

The easy-to-use, low-cost tool can help your doctor make a remote diagnosis or figure out if that’s the case instead of going to the emergency room

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Someone had already said this last March during the first wave. Now the experts of the Scientific Technical Committee return to reiterate it at the beginning of the second: it is better to have an oximeter at home to measure the oxygenation in the blood and thus understand if there are the first signs of pneumonia, when perhaps it is still not clear to the same Covid positive patient. “Pulse oximeters are extraordinarily useful,” said Franco Locatelli, president of the Higher Health Council and CTS member. “Every family should have one, like the thermometer,” explained Luca Richeldi pulmonologist and also a member of the CTS.

In the house like the thermometer

“Pulse oximeters are extraordinarily useful for considering respiratory compromise even at the beginning, with low levels of oxygen saturation. The effort that will be discussed and that will be put in place – explained Locatelli – is to equip general practitioners and therefore infected subjects with pulse oximeters, avoiding critical situations of patients and therefore also the breathlessness of the emergency rooms of the hospitals “. Even clearer is Luca Richeldi who, in addition to being a member of the CTS and also director of Pneumology at the Gemelli in Rome. For him, the oximeter “must enter the paraphernalia of families like the thermometer that tells us if we have a fever. But if having 38 or 39 doesn’t make this difference, knowing instead the oxygen saturation value can tell us if we have ongoing pneumonia ». «Maybe – explains Richeldi – one feels good at that moment but his level is low and he doesn’t notice it. With the covid it can be important to have this tool that is easy to use and low cost and can help the doctor make a remote diagnosis or understand if it is the case instead of going to the emergency room as soon as possible “.

Easy to use

But how does the oximeter work? It is an instrument that, thanks to infrared, measures the percentage of oxygen in a person’s blood. This presence of oxygen is expressed with a percentage that indicates arterial hemoglobin saturation. Under normal conditions this percentage is between 95 and 100 percent: a value between 90 and 95 percent indicates a reduced presence of oxygen, but it is below 90 percent that you need to worry. In some cases, low oxygen is accompanied by shortness of breath, but not always: it may not even cause symptoms. For Covid patients quarantined at home, family doctors provide oximeters so that, by measuring the level of oxygen in the blood themselves, they can monitor the course of the disease and detect any worsening in time. It is not a complicated device: anyone can learn how to use them and they cost around 20-30 euros.

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