cardiac arrest

After researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine called on the general public to find as many of Philadelphia's estimated 5,000 automated external defibrillators as possible, more than 300 "citizen scientists" stepped up and located 1,429 of them in more than 525 buildings across the city.

The eight-week crowdsourcing contest, called MyHeartMap Challenge, is part of what the researchers hope will be a national effort to catalog as many AEDs as possible and develop an interactive app of the registry so that laypeople can act quickly in the event someone nearby … Read more

Arrhythmia, a heart rhythm disorder that affects millions of Americans every year, can lead to a stroke or even sudden cardiac death, if left untreated. And monitoring a patient's heart rhythm for a few minutes or even hours over the course of a doctor's visit often doesn't provide enough data for accurate diagnosis.

Enter the Zio Patch, a new wireless (and fully recyclable) device that adheres to the chest for up to 14 days of continuous monitoring, and can simply be removed and mailed in for results. "It's like the Netflix of heart care," … Read more

When a 15-year-old boy was shocked -- to death -- by a Taser stun gun in Michigan in 2009, Amnesty International called for rigorous testing of the weapon, which delivers an initial 50,000-volt shock.

"There have to be ways of restraining an unarmed teenager other than using electro-shock weapons," the organization said in a statement. "Taser guns are not the safe weapons they are portrayed to be. A full investigation into their safety needs to be carried out before more people suffer the consequences of their misuse."

Now, two research papers are weighing in on … Read more

Researchers at the University of Liverpool say they have developed a new imaging technique that will help them identify, and thus analyze, tissue fibers in the heart that control whether the muscle beats regularly.

Using a micro CT scanner, the team imaged hearts whose tissue had been highlighted using iodine. The scientists discovered that certain tissue -- the conducting tissue that sends an electrical wave to trigger each heartbeat -- absorbed less of the solution than the muscular tissue.

This contrast made it easier to identify which tissue was producing electrical activity in 3D, which has until this study had … Read more

In an effort to quickly and efficiently map the roughly 5,000 automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public areas of Philadelphia, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine recently launched a contest to award $10,000 to the team or person who finds the most.

With the six-week contest, which kicked off in late January, nearing its March 13 deadline, researchers are already planning to conduct a similar, nationwide challenge.

AEDs can save the lives of those suffering cardiac arrests via electric shocks, particularly if used in the first minutes following the onset of the attack. … Read more

Shortly before Christmas, teenager Ben Breedlove, creator of the YouTube channel BreedloveTV, posted a two-part video about his lifelong heart condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It was the high school senior's most serious video and would prove to be his last.

On Christmas morning, while playing with his younger brother in the family's backyard, Breedlove succumbed to the condition that causes a thickening of heart muscle, went into cardiac arrest, and died.

In the days following, Breedlove's final two videos--in which he does not say a word but cycles through a series of flash cards to the music "… Read more

Temple University physics department chair Rongjia Tao made headlines in 2008 when he developed a simple device that creates an electric field to thin fuel, thereby reducing the size of the droplets injected into the engine and improving fuel efficiency.

Now, Tao and former graduate student Ke Huang are unveiling their latest research that this same principle, when applied to the human body, can help thin blood and reduce one's risk of heart attack--without the side effects of blood thinners such as aspirin.

After testing numerous blood samples at Temple, the physicists were able to use a magnetic field of 1.3 Telsa (roughly equivalent to what is used in an MRI) for just one minute to polarize the red blood cells, which contain iron, thereby causing those cells to link together in short, streamlined chains flowing down the center of blood vessels and reducing friction along the walls.

The result: smoother blood flow. In fact, after just 1 to 12 minutes of exposure to the magnetic field via a 1,000-pound magnet, blood viscosity decreased by 20 to 30 percent for several hours. Eventually, blood viscosity returned to previous levels.… Read more

When a 54-year-old man collapsed outside a grocery store on a cold winter's night in rural Minnesota recently, a bystander and a trained first responder who happened to be nearby came together to administer CPR.

Five minutes later, paramedics arrived, continued the CPR, and over the course of the next half-hour delivered six defibrillation shocks.

Then a Mayo Clinic flight crew arrived by helicopter, and they proceeded to administer advanced CPR on the still-pulseless patient. After delivering a total of 11 shocks, the team still couldn't get a pulse, so they upped the drugs, did CPR for two more minutes, and delivered the final, twelfth shock.… Read more

Sudden death syndrome--an umbrella term for a range of heart conditions that can lead to cardiac arrest--is notorious for striking those who seem most fit.

That is because the condition, thought to be largely hereditary, is often triggered by overexertion. Tragically for some, the first symptom can be cardiac arrest.

It's possible, though costly, to screen for SDS. In fact, after soccer prodigy John Marshall died of a sudden heart attack at age 16 in 1994, the day before he was set to join Everton, testing became compulsory for professional athletes in several countries.

Good thing, especially for those who don't have the means that professional athletes do, that a doctor at Tel Aviv University may have just made testing for the condition far simpler and more affordable.

"There is such a significant overlap between what's normal and abnormal on an ECG [electrocardiogram] that we need additional screening parameters," Dr. Sami Viskin, a cardiologist at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, said yesterday in a university press release. "This test, when done on people with strong symptoms, can really give...doctors a yardstick to compare those at risk for sudden death syndrome to those who would otherwise go on to live a healthy life."

Named after the doctor, the Viskin Test is easy on the patient, who simply undergoes a baseline ECG while resting in the supine position, and is then asked to stand quickly and remain still during continuous ECG recording.… Read more