BlackboardEngineers Building Device to Detect Heart Attacks Faster
TALLAHASSEE, FL - When a heart attack strikes, the difference between recovery and possibly death is counted in the minutes between the attack and treatment.
Now, a new procedure developed by two Florida State University engineers holds the promise of cutting minutes or hours off the time it takes to begin life-saving treatment by speeding up the detection of a heart attack.
Yousef Haik, a professor of chemical and mechanical engineering at the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, said the procedure takes as little as three minutes after a blood sample is drawn to determine whether a person has suffered a heart attack and establish its severity. A 30-minute lab test is currently required to determine whether someone has suffered a heart attack after a blood sample is taken. But unlike the new procedure, the conventional lab test fails to measure the severity of a heart attack, which would be an important consideration for doctors when determining how aggressively to treat a victim.
"If we could do the whole test in the emergency room instead of having to send the blood sample to a lab, we could save a lot of people's lives," Haik said. He is being assisted in the research by the dean of the engineering school, Ching-Jen Chen.
The procedure uses magnet technology to remove the red blood cells from the sample so the patient's level of myoglobin and fatty acid-binding protein can be easily measured. Both proteins elevate in the blood following a heart attack and peak within four to six hours. Nano-size magnetic particles are mixed with the blood sample and bind to the red blood cells, which are then separated from the plasma by a magnet.
The level of the two proteins in blood drops almost as quickly as it peaks, making early diagnosis of a heart attack critical.
Heart attacks are blood clots that lodge in the heart and disrupt blood flow, said Dr. Joseph Scherger, dean of FSU's College of Medicine, who has seen Haik and Chen's work. The clot almost immediately causes heart muscle to die, so the faster medication can be given to dissolve it the greater a patient's chances of recovery. "The earlier any diagnosis can be made of a heart attack can dramatically help in the treatment and increase a patient's ability to prevent heart damage," Scherger said.
According to a 1999 study by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, about 800,000 people suffer heart attacks each year in the United States and about 213,000 of them die. At least half of those die within one hour of the attack and before reaching a hospital or emergency room.
The College of Engineering has applied for a patent on the procedure but is taking the research a step further. Haik and Chen are working on building a portable blood test kit that physicians and other health professionals could carry in their pockets to test the blood of potential heart attack victims on the spot. Researchers in FSU's physics and biology departments are working on a similar project, as well.
"The steps for faster detection of heart attacks we already know," said Dean Chen. "Now, we're miniaturizing it."
