Battery-powered bedside scanner that takes just three minutes to detect if someone may have had a heart attack

A revolutionary new bedside scanner takes just three minutes to detect if someone may have had a heart attack; current tests can take hours.

The battery-powered device can tell doctors almost instantly if a patient’s chest pain is due to a serious cardiac issue, such as a heart attack or angina (chest pain caused by partially blocked blood vessels), or unrelated to the heart.

It could spare hundreds of thousands of patients a year with chest pain the worry of waiting for hours in hospital to find out if they’ve suffered a heart scare.

Currently, when a patient goes to hospital with chest pain, doctors presume they have had a heart attack until proved otherwise.

This means carrying out repeat electrocardiograms — a measure of the heart’s electrical activity — and taking blood samples to check for raised levels of a protein called troponin.

This is released by heart muscle damaged by a shortage of oxygen thanks to a clot shutting off its blood supply. But troponin levels can take up to 12 hours or more to increase after a heart attack — which means patients must stay in hospital for tests.

According to NHS research body the York Health Economics Consortium, around 1.3 million people a year in the UK go to hospital with chest pain.

More than 800,000 of these cases turn out to be nothing to do with the heart. Most are instead due to a severe form of acid reflux.

Such patients currently take up vital resources in busy A&E departments, so the new bedside scanner could free up doctors and nurses to treat more seriously ill patients.

The Vitalscan device relies on magnetocardiography — a technology first developed in the Seventies to study the heart in great detail.

Anything that has lots of electrical activity, such as the heart, also generates a magnetic field.

Tiny sensors, called magnet-ometers, pick up signals from the magnetic field. These can be severely distorted if heart cells are diseased or dying owing to a lack of oxygen — as in the case of a heart attack.

The problem is that most scanners are bulky machines, costing in excess of £1million each; they also cannot be moved and need highly-trained technicians to operate them.

As a result, their use has mainly been confined to scientific research, rather than everyday medicine.

The Vitalscan is a miniaturised version and can be moved around the hospital on a trolley. It has a long flexible ‘arm’, on the end of which is a scanner the size of a computer screen. This is placed about an inch above the patient’s bare chest as they lie flat.

The scanner relays findings to a computer, which displays them in the form of a ‘map’, where oxygen-starved cells are highlighted in vivid colours.

Doctors also get a score indicating how likely it is that chest pain is due to heart problems. The score ranges from zero, where arteries are perfectly healthy, to one — which means they are completely blocked.

If the score is low, patients can be sent home or told to see their GP. If it’s high, ECGs and troponin tests are carried out to confirm if it’s the result of a heart attack.

The £100,000 machine is being marketed by a British company, Creavo Medical Technologies Ltd, based on initial developments by scientists at Leeds University.

It is halfway through trials at four NHS hospitals in Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Bristol, where doctors aim to use it on around 750 patients to test its accuracy. The trials are expected to be completed later this year.

Martin Cowie, a professor of cardiology at Imperial College London, said the scanner was potentially useful. But he stressed it needed to be tested on thousands of patients — rather than hundreds — before it could be routinely used to rule out heart attacks.

‘This new technology is an interesting development, but needs to be further evaluated,’ he said.

MEDICAL MISCELLANY?

Why do we lose our appetite in hot weather? 

Although you may feel you eat less when it’s hot, in fact, there’s little scientific data to back this up, says Dr Gunter Kuhnle, an associate professor of nutrition and health at the University of Reading.

But there is some anecdotal evidence that people do eat less in hotter climates.

‘The thinking behind this is evolutionary —that if you’re slimmer it’s easier to lose heat because, compared with heavier people, you have a larger surface area in relation to your overall mass,’ says Dr Kuhnle.

DID YOU KNOW?

Babies can distinguish between languages — even before they’re born. Scientists at the University of Kansas Medical Center, in the U.S., discovered the heart rate of babies a month away from being born changed when they were spoken to in unfamiliar Japanese, compared with English spoken by the same bilingual speaker.  

HOLIDAY HEALTH

Surprising health risks of holidays. This week: Sit in the back of the taxi

During the 2009 flu pandemic, scientists looked at the risk of infection during air travel compared with other modes of transport.

The results showed the chances of catching flu were far greater when riding in a taxi with an infected driver for a few minutes, than spending hours on a plane with hundreds of other travellers.

‘It found the riskiest bit of the whole journey was the taxi ride to the airport,’ says John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary University London.

‘You are enclosed in a small space with somebody who may be shedding the flu virus in large quantities — so you’re more likely to come into contact with the infected particles.’

‘The best way to reduce the risk is to sit in the back of the taxi, rather than up front with the driver.’

You are less at risk on a plane because they have filters that remove bacteria and viruses from the air, he adds.

COULD A PIECE OF PLASTIC TUBE STOP NERVE PAIN? 

A tiny ‘glove’ that’s threaded over damaged nerves is being used to ease pain caused by neuromas.

These are knots of scar tissue that occur when nerves are damaged through trauma or wear and tear.

Usually, surgery is required to remove the scarring. The new glove, developed by Netherlands-based company Polyganics, is a tiny tube made of biodegradable polyester which is threaded over the damaged nerve to stop it touching surrounding tissue, easing pain while the nerve heals.

The technique is being trialled at Birmingham University Hospital.

Fidgeting may help you lose weight. Office workers given a device that encouraged them to move their legs used up 20 per cent more calories, according to research in the journal Frontiers of Psychology. Despite being small, the constant muscle contractions burn up extra calories, report researchers at the University of Calgary, Canada, and the Mayo Clinic in the U.S. 

WHY PETTING ANIMALS CAN PREVENT ALLERGIES 

Swiss scientists may have a new explanation for why children who grow up on farms are less at risk of asthma and allergies.

It’s well known that the rich diversity of microbes on farms helps protect against allergies.

Now researchers from the University of Zurich have found that a type of acid called Neu5Gc is also part of the picture. Humans do not naturally produce this, but it’s widespread in farm animals, and can be absorbed by humans by petting animals or eating food of animal origin.

Contact with the acid sets up an anti-inflammatory response in the body, which could help prevent allergies (linked to inflammation).

In tests, mice that ate Neu5Gc molecules had improved lung function.