OCCURRENCE OF HYPOXIA IN THE WARDS OF A RURAL HOSPITAL

OBJECTIVE: Hypoxia is an indicator of a serious medical condition in a patient and can have grave consequences. This study was done to assess the magnitude of hypoxia in different wards of our tertiary care hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Study was done on all the patients admitted in the General Medicine wards and ICU during 8 weeks of study. Pulse oximeter was used to measure the oxygen saturation in all the patients who remained admitted for at least 24 hrs. A cut off point of 90% was taken to diagnose hypoxia. RESULTS: 800 patients were admitted in the general medicine wards and ICU of the hospital. Hypoxia was detected in 88(11%) patients. Among these, 12 (1.5%) patients were already having a diagnosis of respiratory failure, and were not on oxygen therapy, while 8 (1%) were having SpO2 < 90 % despite of oxygen therapy. In 68(8.5%) patients, hypoxia was detected incidentally. CONCLUSION: Significant number of patients admitted in the wards of the hospital showed unnoticed hypoxia. Therefore it is concluded that oxygen saturation measurements should be included in the monitoring charts of all admitted patients.