Abstract
Background:Hypoxia may be the indicator of serious medical illness, if not corrected can have its impacts on mortality and morbidity.Diagnosing hypoxemia using pulse oximeter is a routine in well resourced clinical settings but in limited resourced settings,it is a rarity.
Objective:To find the frequency of undiagnosed hypoxia in admitted patients due to any illness.
Materials and Methods:This cross sectional study is conducted in Nishtar Hospital Multan, a tertiary care hospital.We included patients by simple random probability,from various wards.Oxygen saturation (SpO2) was checked with a handheld pulse oximeter.Hypoxia was diagnosed when resting room air SpO2 was less than 90%.
Results:296 patients were enrolled. 46 children (less than 15 years) and 250 were adults (15 years or older).Hypoxia was found in 25 patients (8.44%) in total,7 children (15.21%) and 18 adults (7.2%).In children,Pneumonia was most common while nephrotic syndrome and meningitis were other common illnesses found.In adults,hypoxia was more frequently noticed in post-operative cases of general surgery.Other hypoxic adults had respiratory ailments,IHD,CNS infections and CVA.None was previously diagnosed to have respiratory failure and none was on supplemental oxygen therapy at the time of diagnosis.Hypoxia was an incidental finding.Pulse oximetry enabled us to diagnose undiagnosed hypoxia and changed management leading to application of oxygen and further diagnostic testing.
Conclusion:Undiagnosed hypoxia was found in significant number of admitted patients.This supports that oxygen saturation checking with pulse oximeter should be the part of vitals monitoring of all admitted patients as their 5thvital sign.
- © 2014 ERS
