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 proved reliable in diagnosing heart attacks and abnormal rhythms. But they can’t currently detect heart disease, which causes 20m deaths a year. For that, patients need echocardiograms, which many wait months for.
“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 identified up to 93% of heart disease cases. 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.”
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