Abstract

COVID-19, which has become a pandemic is caused by coronavirus and led to severe acute respiratory syndrome. Its complication include respiratory incompetence, damage in the muscles of the lung and heart , problems in nervous system and kidney or death. One of the characteristic symptoms of COVID-19 is the low levels of oxygen in patients' blood, a condition known as hypoxemia. Patients with hypoxemia often show the following symptoms: coughing wheezing, difficulty in breathing, headache, feeling disoriented, cyanosis in which the skin, lips, or fingernails become blue colored, even though hypoxemia is diagnosed by some tests, such as analysis of blood gas and pulse oximetry, caution should be considered when pulse oximetry interpreted, because of shifting in the left-sided of the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve. Hypoxemia causes acute respiratory distress syndrome, that includes inflammation and edema, leadings to impairment in the alveolar homeostasis, modification in the physiology of lung resulting in vascular thrombosis, endothelial inflammation and pulmonary fibrosis, therefore any tardiness in diagnosis and introducing proper treatment can led to mortal outcomes. In this review we present hypoxemia as one of the symptoms resulting from infection with COVID-19 infection, focusing on their types, causes and possible treatment for this condition.