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Here’s an app you’re going to want to download in a few years: Heart Attack Predictor. And it’s in the distant future, according to Eric Topol, M.D., Men’s Health adviser and cardiologist at Scripps Health.
In a recent study, researchers took blood samples of people in the early minutes of a heart attack. Those subjects had more than four times the concentration of circulating endothelial cells—cells that sloughed off your weakened blood vessel walls—than healthy controls.
“We are really good at diagnosing a heart attack, but we can’t say, ‘There is an artery cracking and you’re going to have a heart attack,’ ” says Topol. “Now we can trace the cells that come off a cracked artery, and know a heart attack is incubating.”
Doctors will eventually be able to embed a sensor the size of a grain of sand in the bloodstream of at-risk patients, says Topol. Call it the app of the century. “It will detect circulating endothelial cells, talk to an app on your cell phone, and alert you when you’re having an imminent heart attack.”
This means quicker diagnosis. Doctors will be able to prevent blood clots they otherwise wouldn’t have known existed and stabilize inflamed arteries before an attack happens.
In a recent study, researchers took blood samples of people in the early minutes of a heart attack. Those subjects had more than four times the concentration of circulating endothelial cells—cells that sloughed off your weakened blood vessel walls—than healthy controls.
“We are really good at diagnosing a heart attack, but we can’t say, ‘There is an artery cracking and you’re going to have a heart attack,’ ” says Topol. “Now we can trace the cells that come off a cracked artery, and know a heart attack is incubating.”
Doctors will eventually be able to embed a sensor the size of a grain of sand in the bloodstream of at-risk patients, says Topol. Call it the app of the century. “It will detect circulating endothelial cells, talk to an app on your cell phone, and alert you when you’re having an imminent heart attack.”
This means quicker diagnosis. Doctors will be able to prevent blood clots they otherwise wouldn’t have known existed and stabilize inflamed arteries before an attack happens.
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