I asked my dad, a doctor (internal medicine). My blood oxygenation is usually around 92-93%. It can vary for a number of reasons. Anything under 90% is considered hypoxia, but the high 80s can be “normal” in a long time smoker.
The hospital is likely to be very busy and not have time for mild cases. Blood oxygenation of 92% does not warrant their attention. I’d give my doctor (or the emergency room) a call at 90% oxygenation. At 85% it’s definitely time to go to the hospital (unless they tell you otherwise). Below 80% brings a severe risk of organ failure, so that’s a life threatening emergency.
Use common sense—if your doctor is telling you one thing an a random internet comment is telling you differently, believe the doctor. Also, if your readings are going down rapidly, call your doctor. Don’t drive if you’re significantly impaired.
Blood oxygen can certainly vary between people, but I think this gives a misleading picture for many people. Most of my friends have blood oxygenation of >98, and getting to 90 would imply rampant infection and warrant hospitalization if the hospitals aren’t overrun yet. Certainly 90-95% is not “normal”, as the OP now says (the link specifically says it’s not normal).
I think people should be considering hospitalization once they’ve dropped 6% in SpO2 AND they’ve dropped below 92% SpO2. More thoughts are in my longer comment here. This covers people with unnaturally low SpO2 to begin with, while also acknowledging that many people do start from ~100% and should not wait until they have such an infection that their lungs have dropped past chronic smoker levels of impairment.
That all seems solid, but I’d still call ahead before going to the hospital. If they have more critical cases than they can handle, a mild case could wind up waiting indefinitely.
P.S. Medical types use the word “normal” to mean “not meeting the criteria for a diagnosis”.
Normal blood oxygen saturation is 95% and above; without a history of fairly significant lung disease I’d be surprised if you were persistently under this level—note that an oximeter can give very variable readings due to artefact from all sorts of things including movement, ambient light, temperature (probably a significant one in the context of an infection if you are having a fever/rigoring/very cold fingers), and the number it spits out is the average over the last 3-12s.
If you are short of breath with coronavirus it is worth talking to a healthcare provider. If you are a generally well human and have persistent sats around 90%, go to hospital. If you have oxygen sats of 85% you are severely hypoxic and should consider an ambulance.
(I didn’t downvote your post and I applaud that you went to the effort to find out more and make actual thresholds for action)
Personally my oxygen saturation always reads 91-93%. I’m 47 years old with no known lung problems who never smoked. People vary. I’m an unusually large man, so it may be a square-cube law effect or a finger-thickness effect. It may be some other confounder.
Under normal circumstances I would agree with the rest. In the very near future healthcare providers are expected to be absolutely swamped with coronavirus cases; apparently corpses have been piling up in Italy. I think my thresholds for action are stricter than yours because I’m trying to minimize strain on the system. But at 90% your plan is to go to the hospital and my plan is to call a doctor to find out if I should go to the hospital. That’s not a huge difference.
Related: the mayor of Baltimore has requested his citizens avoid senseless gun violence for similar reasons. Things are getting weird out there.
Edited to add: It probably wouldn’t bother me so much if it wasn’t giving out negative “karma”—that’s not something I’d dole out to anyone. Or if it didn’t just take one vote (not everyone here is always as rational as they’d like to think) to remove comments from general view.
I asked my dad, a doctor (internal medicine). My blood oxygenation is usually around 92-93%. It can vary for a number of reasons. Anything under 90% is considered hypoxia, but the high 80s can be “normal” in a long time smoker.
The hospital is likely to be very busy and not have time for mild cases. Blood oxygenation of 92% does not warrant their attention. I’d give my doctor (or the emergency room) a call at 90% oxygenation. At 85% it’s definitely time to go to the hospital (unless they tell you otherwise). Below 80% brings a severe risk of organ failure, so that’s a life threatening emergency.
Use common sense—if your doctor is telling you one thing an a random internet comment is telling you differently, believe the doctor. Also, if your readings are going down rapidly, call your doctor. Don’t drive if you’re significantly impaired.
Blood oxygen can certainly vary between people, but I think this gives a misleading picture for many people. Most of my friends have blood oxygenation of >98, and getting to 90 would imply rampant infection and warrant hospitalization if the hospitals aren’t overrun yet. Certainly 90-95% is not “normal”, as the OP now says (the link specifically says it’s not normal).
I think people should be considering hospitalization once they’ve dropped 6% in SpO2 AND they’ve dropped below 92% SpO2. More thoughts are in my longer comment here. This covers people with unnaturally low SpO2 to begin with, while also acknowledging that many people do start from ~100% and should not wait until they have such an infection that their lungs have dropped past chronic smoker levels of impairment.
That all seems solid, but I’d still call ahead before going to the hospital. If they have more critical cases than they can handle, a mild case could wind up waiting indefinitely.
P.S. Medical types use the word “normal” to mean “not meeting the criteria for a diagnosis”.
Normal blood oxygen saturation is 95% and above; without a history of fairly significant lung disease I’d be surprised if you were persistently under this level—note that an oximeter can give very variable readings due to artefact from all sorts of things including movement, ambient light, temperature (probably a significant one in the context of an infection if you are having a fever/rigoring/very cold fingers), and the number it spits out is the average over the last 3-12s.
If you are short of breath with coronavirus it is worth talking to a healthcare provider. If you are a generally well human and have persistent sats around 90%, go to hospital. If you have oxygen sats of 85% you are severely hypoxic and should consider an ambulance.
(I didn’t downvote your post and I applaud that you went to the effort to find out more and make actual thresholds for action)
Personally my oxygen saturation always reads 91-93%. I’m 47 years old with no known lung problems who never smoked. People vary. I’m an unusually large man, so it may be a square-cube law effect or a finger-thickness effect. It may be some other confounder.
Under normal circumstances I would agree with the rest. In the very near future healthcare providers are expected to be absolutely swamped with coronavirus cases; apparently corpses have been piling up in Italy. I think my thresholds for action are stricter than yours because I’m trying to minimize strain on the system. But at 90% your plan is to go to the hospital and my plan is to call a doctor to find out if I should go to the hospital. That’s not a huge difference.
Related: the mayor of Baltimore has requested his citizens avoid senseless gun violence for similar reasons. Things are getting weird out there.
I’d appreciate knowing why someone downvoted this.
Me too. If there’s something wrong with my plan, I’d prefer to find out the easy way.
It’s a bit of a peeve of mine this down voting without explanation, but I’m getting used to it! I up-voted yesterday :)
blood oxygen—Hb/O2 dissociation curve.
Edited to add: It probably wouldn’t bother me so much if it wasn’t giving out negative “karma”—that’s not something I’d dole out to anyone. Or if it didn’t just take one vote (not everyone here is always as rational as they’d like to think) to remove comments from general view.