Pseudohypoxemia
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A spurious measurement of oxygen saturation of blood, giving a false appearance of hypoxemia; it can happen via technical problems (such as a malfunctioning pulse oximeter) or even when all technical details are correct but hyperleukocytosis or thrombocytosis is present and the testing method is blood gas analysis. uncountable
"Pseudohypoxemia or spurious hypoxemia represents a low oxygen tension or saturation in an arterial blood sample that does not correspond with the actual levels in the body. […] A young patient with leukemia and extreme leukocytosis (hyperleukoctosis) who demonstrated pseudohypoxemia is described herein. Clinical experiments on the arterial blood sample from this patient revealed that the phenomenon of pseudohypoxemia was most likely caused by a rapid in vitro oxygen consumption by the excessively large number of immature leukemic cells."
Example
More examples"Pseudohypoxemia or spurious hypoxemia represents a low oxygen tension or saturation in an arterial blood sample that does not correspond with the actual levels in the body. […] A young patient with leukemia and extreme leukocytosis (hyperleukoctosis) who demonstrated pseudohypoxemia is described herein. Clinical experiments on the arterial blood sample from this patient revealed that the phenomenon of pseudohypoxemia was most likely caused by a rapid in vitro oxygen consumption by the excessively large number of immature leukemic cells."
Etymology
From pseudo- + hypoxemia.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.