Scientists Develop Ways of Detecting Heart Attack
German researchers have come up with a new generation of defibrillators and early — warning software aimed at offering heart patients greater protection from sudden death from cardiac arrest.
In Germany alone around 100,000 p eople die annually as a result of cardiac arrest and many of these cases are caused by disruption to the heart's rhythm. Those most at risk are patients who have already suffered a heart attack, and for years the use of defibrillators has proved useful in diagnosing life-threatening disruptions to heart rhythms and correcting them automatically by intervening within seconds. These devices take on a range of functions, such as that of pacemaker.
Heart specialists at Freiburg's University Clinic have now achieved a breakthrough with an implanted defibrillator capable of generating a six — channel electrocardiogram (ECG) within the body. This integrated system allows early diagnosis of acute blood — flow problems and a pending heart attack. It will be implanted in patients for the first time this year. Meanwhile, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Mathematics in Kaiserslautern have developed new computer software that renders of ECG data more precise.
The overwhelming majority of patients at risk will not have an implanted defibrillator and must for this reason undergo regular ECGs. "Many of the current programs only take into account a linear correlation of the data. We are, however, making use of a non — linear process that reveals the chaotic patterns of heart beats as an open and complex system," Hagen Knaf says, "In this way changes in the heart beats over time can be monitored and individual variations in patients taken into account." An old study of ECG data, based upon 600 patients who had suffered a subsequent heart attack, enabled the researchers to compare risks and to show that the new software evaluates the data considerably better. [卫生类A]
科学家探索发现心脏病的方法
德国研究者们发明了新一代的除颤器和旨在为心脏病人提供更多保护，使他们免遭心脏停止导致的突然死亡的早期预报软件。
仅在德国每年就有10万人死于心脏停止。其中大部分是由于心律中断导致的。危险最大的是那些已经犯过一次心脏病的病人。几年来除颤器被证实在探测心律中止和在几秒钟内实施自动干涉以调整心律的诊断中是有用的。这种方法起到了很多作用，例如起搏器。
弗莱伯大学诊所的心脏病专家已经在内置除颤器方面取得了突破性成就。这种除颤器可以在体内产生六个频道的心电图。这个综合体系使血液流通问题和即将发生的心脏病可被早些诊断出来。今年它将第一次被植入病人体内。同时，凯瑟劳特的弗劳胡佛实用数学学院的研究者开发了一种新计算机软件。这种软件使心电图数据更加准确。
大部分有风险的患者不能用内置除颤器，因此必须接受常规的心电图检查。“目前的许多计划只把数据的线性关系考虑在内。但是我们现在使用的是能够将心脏跳动的混乱模式作为一个直观而又复杂的系统揭示出来的非线性处理方法”。海根·纳夫说，“这样心脏跳动频率的变化就会受到控制，而病人个人的特征也会得到考虑。”一个基于600位连续犯心脏病的患者的以前的心电图数据研究使科学家们能够比较两种风险，结果显示新软件明显能更好地处理心电图数据。[卫生类A]