New tool detects heart disease ‘in seconds’
Software that can detect heart disease in seconds could help change the trajectory of the condition for millions of people, experts said this week.
The new tool, developed by Imperial College London, scans electrocardiograms (ECGs) for information that human cardiologists are unable to see.
ECGs record electrical activity in the heart and have long proved reliable in helping cardiologists diagnose heart attacks and abnormal rhythms. But even the most experienced among them are unable to detect signs of heart disease in ECG data. For that, they must carry out echocardiograms, which many patients wait months for – valuable time lost that could be spent seeing treatment.
“We looked at the ECGs to see if we could do things that are superhuman,” said Imperial’s Dr Arunashis Sau. “Not things that clinicians can already do, but things that no cardiologist, no matter how expert, can do.”
A trial involving 67,000 patients found that the tool successfully correctly identified up to 81% of patients who had heart failure and 90% of those who had heart valve disease. The results were presented at the European Society of Cardiology annual congress in Munich, Germany.
“A 10-second ECG, once a blunt screening tool, may soon become one of the most informative tests in medicine,” said Fu Siong Ng, professor of cardiology at Imperial. Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, the British Heart Foundation’s clinical director, added: “When it comes to the heart, earlier diagnosis and treatment saves lives.”
Image: peakSTOCK
