Oximetría de pulso y su relación con la detección precoz de enfermedad cardiaca en neonatos

Abstract

Objective: to analyze the scientific evidence about the use of pulse oximetry for heart disease screening in newborns. Method: a narrative review of scientific literature was conducted through bibliographic search of indexed articles in the PubMed database, limited to the English and Spanish languages, and published in the past two years (2016-2018). The health descriptors from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) were used for the bibliographic search, and the following terms were used in combination with the Boolean operator AND: “Oximetry AND Congenital Heart AND neonatal screening”. Documents with low scientific evidence were excluded, such as expert opinions and editorials. Results: twelve (12) relevant studies were identified. From the review conducted, it can be highlighted that pulse oximetry testing routinely conducted in newborns (NBs) will increase the sensitivity for detecting children with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), even for those who are asymptomatic. An early diagnosis of CHD in NBs will improve morbimortality results in this age group. At the same time, healthcare expenses will be reduced with an early detection of CHD cases in NBs; otherwise, this would represent a very high cost in terms of their life-long treatment. Conclusions: pulse oximetry is a technique supporting the early diagnosis of CHD in NBs, mostly in those situations where there is no complementary technology for a final diagnosis.