Person holding a pulse oximeter © 2024 Bloomberg Finance LP

Deprive your body of oxygen and you are minutes away from death. Cut your oxygen level from its normal range, 95 to 100% saturated, to just below 90% and, while you are not necessarily minutes away from death, your body will soon experience permanent damage as its tissues suffocate for lack of this precious chemical. Add on a serious illness, maybe a systemic infection, and every percent reduction in oxygen saturation portends a more dire outcome.

That is why when patients are admitted to intensive care units, clinicians carefully monitor their oxygen levels. More surprisingly, it is also why research on ethnic bias is critical to improving patient outcomes in the ICU, because without that research, we would not have discovere

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