Saliva test may speed heart attack diagnosis

[flashl]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A simple saliva test may one day be used in ambulances, restaurants, neighborhood drug stores, or other places in the community to quickly tell if a person is having a heart attack.

"Proteins found in the saliva have the ability to rapidly classify potential heart attacks," Dr. John T. McDevitt, a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin, told Reuters Health.

McDevitt and colleagues developed a nano-bio-chip sensor that is biochemically programmed to detect sets of proteins in saliva capable of determining whether or not a person is currently having a heart attack or is at high risk of having a heart attack in the near future.

With the saliva heart attack diagnostic test, a person spits into a tube and the saliva is then transferred to credit card-sized lab card that holds the nano-bio-chip containing a standard battery of cardiac biomarkers. The loaded card is inserted like an ATM card into an analyzer that determines the patient's heart status in as little as 15 minutes.

Reuters

[postulater]

1. Great use of the human mind and a worthy place to invest

our health research money.

Thanks for the article.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

2. Fascinating?

the article mentions women as having non-specific symptoms, diabetics often present with atypical symptoms, also. This could be a great tool for EMS. We currently do 12 lead EKG's in the field (and that's on a fire engine) and can transmit them to the hopsital so they can get the cath lab ready for the patient experiencing the acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or st elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Thanks for finding the article and posting it.

David

[Book Lover]

3. I've got a question for you

The article says it can take as little as 15 minutes to get the results. Does that seem like a reasonable amount of time? It seems awfully long to me, but I'm curious to know what you think. Thanks.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

5. Well it's reasonable compared to the alternative.

The alternative is cardiac enzyme levels which take between 1.5 to 2 hours. You have to understand that treatment doesn't really change anyway. If you have chest pain you get oxygen, IV, EKG, nitro hopefully a 12 lead EKG initially to help rule out AMI or STEMI or confirm it. You do have some false positives though with 12 leads. Cardiac Enzymes are needed to make a differential diagnosis I believe. There in lies the problem with patients with atypical chest pain, they are made to wait until those blood tests come back, which increases cardiac muscle damage and disability due to things like congestive heart failure. So hopefully these patients who have abnormal ekgs and this new test will go straight to the cath lab within the desired door to balloon time of 90 minutes or less. So I guess in the grand scheme of things 15 minutes is a long time but not when you consider that very few patients have even arrived at the hospital within that time frame.

David

[Book Lover]

6. Thanks so much!

I appreciate your reply.

[grasswire]

4. amazing, thanks

This will save a lot of people a lot of money, if widely implemented -- assuming that it will prevent the drawing of cardiac enzymes and other lab work. And perhaps it will prevent trips to the ER for false alarms.