12, May 2014

Now smart phones can keep track of lung and heart diseases

Suffering from chronic lung and heart diseases? If scientists have their way, you may soon turn your cell phone into a sophisticated medical device to monitor your condition with an app. The GaitTrack app can keep track of a patient’s heart and lungs by analysing the way he/she walks. 

GaitTrack uses eight motion parameters to perform a detailed analysis of a person’s walking pattern, which can tell physicians much about a patient’s cardiopulmonary, muscular and neurological health. After temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and blood oxygen level, gait, or the pattern of walking, is considered the ‘sixth vital sign.’

Gait speed involves several systems of the body working together in coordination, so changes in gait can be a sign of trouble in one or more systems. The researchers used GaitTrack to administer six-minute walk tests to 30 patients with chronic lung disease and found that it monitored more accurately – and more cheaply – than the medical accelerometers.  

In addition, they discovered that analysis of the gait data could predict lung function with 90 percent accuracy, within an age group. The researchers are now testing GaitTrack in larger trials within health systems and it could be available for download within months.

‘Population health measurement is the key to making health care viable. If you could just measure what people were doing all the time, then you could get enough information to make rational decisions,’ said Bruce Schatz, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois in the US.

The findings appeared in the journal Telemedicine and e-Health.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

12.05.2014

Woman with heart transplant gives birth after a decade

A Chilean woman, who had a heart transplant in 2004, has given birth to a baby at the same hospital in Vina del Mar city where she was operated upon 10 years back, medical officials said.

‘There are very few such cases in the world, there can’t be more than 30 or 40 women who have had heart transplants and have successfully given birth afterwards,’ Ernesto Aranguiz, head of cardiovascular surgery at the Gustavo Fricke Hospital, told media Saturday. Daillana Llanos, 29, is in excellent condition, as is her daughter who was born in her mother’s 37th week of pregnancy, he said.

The woman had her heart transplant in November 2004 due to dilated cardiomyopathy, soon after having her first baby girl. 

Daillana’s heart ‘stopped functioning as an effect of giving birth to her daughter’, Aranguiz said. ‘We received her in very extreme condition but fortunately we had a donor and with that the chance to give her a new heart.’

During her second pregnancy, the patient was under permanent observation at the hospital, said Gabriel Andwanter, head of the fetal medicine unit. Daillana ‘was very nervous about the effect of the immunosuppressant drugs’, he said. ‘Fortunately, there was no problem, an elective caesarean section was planned and the final result has been very satisfactory,’ he said.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

12.05.2014

Calcium pills won’t harm your heart

You can probably pop those calcium supplement pills for bones without worrying much about how they would affect your heart. A new study shows that calcium supplement intake need not necessarily increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases in women.

Previous studies had suggested that calcium supplements may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease but the data has been inconsistent. Researchers examined supplemental calcium use and incidents of cardiovascular disease in a prospective cohort study of 74,245 women. The women did not have cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start of the study.  

They were followed for 24 years to document the risk of heart attack and stroke. Calcium supplement intake was assessed every four years. ‘Our study has several distinct strengths compared to prior studies including the large number of participants and long term follow up,’ said Julie Paik from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US.

The researchers found that at the start of the study, women who took calcium supplements had higher levels of physical activity, smoked less and had lower trans fat intake compared to women who did not take calcium supplements. During the 24 years of follow up, there were 2,709 heart attacks and 1,856 strokes.  

The study appeared in the journal Osteoporosis International.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

12.05.2014

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer