From the April 2021 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Comparing the results of 210 patients who underwent SPECT-MPI in March and April 2020 to those of 1,106 who underwent the exam around the same time in 2019, the researchers found SPECT-MPI volumes at the hospital fell from 553 per month to 105, a decrease of 81%. The proportion of abnormal results, however, only dipped from 31% at the baseline to 27% at the peak.
Deep learning system could save time in scoring coronary calcium
Quantifying and scoring coronary calcium may soon be simplified with a deep learning system developed by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.
While detectable on CT scans, coronary calcium requires radiological expertise, time and specialized equipment to calculate the amount of plaque present. Clinicians often must look at the CT slice by slice for 'bright specks' of calcium in the coronary arteries and circle each one. All the specks are then added up by the software they work with to calculate the coronary artery calcium score.
The automated calcium scores correlated closely with manual, human-made calcium scores and independently predicted who would have a major adverse cardiovascular event. In addition, the inclusion of three National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-funded trials in its training further supports the generalizability of these findings to clinical settings, according to the authors.
"The most important next step is the prospective implementation and evaluation of the system in opportunistic and organized screening settings to identify unknown high risk individuals for cardiovascular disease (CVD), and include these individuals into CVD prevention programs. This can lead to an increase of population health," said Dr. Hugo Aerts, director of the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.
Apple iPhone 12 magnet may pose risk to cardiac implants
The Apple iPhone 12 series includes a new feature that can accidentally deactivate or interfere with the functioning of cardiac implants.
Researchers at Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute discovered a strong magnet in the phone can turn off a defibrillator or deliver electrical pulses to a pacemaker that cause the heart to beat out of sync when the phone is placed near a patient’s chest. This can result in a potentially lethal condition called ventricular fibrillation, a condition in which ventricles of the heart quiver instead of pumping normally due to disorganized electrical activity.
