The only problem I have with using a pulse ox to try to self diagnose OSA is that while a positive (documented desats) are pretty reliable there are those people who have OSA that don't desat all that much so there's a chance of false negatives in terms of OSA.Hannibal 2 wrote:The study concluded that patients with positive oximeter readings or clinical scores of 3 or higher would indicate the presence of sleep apnea. The researchers also recommended repeating the pulse oximeter measurements over multiple nights to increase the accuracy."
No desats don't always mean no OSA. I have a friend who has severe OSA, AHI in the 60s and her pulse ox never went below 96% and this was an in lab sleep study pulse ox report...I read it.
If you are using a pulse ox on someone who is already in denial and it comes up negative for many desats they tend to say "see I don't have OSA" and blow it off because we just gave them something that says they didn't have it.
There's more to OSA than just desats. Now the chances are there would be some desats but it isn't 100% because no desats or very minimal desats can happen even with severe OSA. We don't always have the big earth shattering wake up call desats. Now if someone was still open to OSA even with an unremarkable pulse ox report...it's an easy way to do a screening. Not expensive and not intrusive...just a little doodad on the finger or wrist.
It just scares me when the entire diagnosis depends on the pulse ox when people are in denial...they will look for any excuse in the world to validate their "I don't need a machine" defense.
