By Alexa Spencer Originally appeared in Word in Black As the Black community grapples with the ongoing impact of COVID-19, research shows that the faultiness of pulse oximeters on dark-skinned people contributed to poor outcomes during the pandemic. When clipped onto a patient’s finger, pulse oximeters send a beam of light through the skin to calculate oxygen levels. Most times, the technology works correctly on lighter skin, but for dark-skinned folks, the oxygen levels could read inaccurately high. When this happens, a person could appear to have more oxygen in their body than they actually do, resulting in misdiagnosis or
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