Can you image that you can understand your risk of having the myocardial infarction (MI) by single blood drop? Mackay Memorial Hospital develops the Biochip, using an advanced chipset to screen the heart attack risk. The Biochip is now under clinical trial phases. In the future, patients with chest pain can understand their heart attack risk via one single drop of blood. The Biochip also combine a cloud-based system, which evaluates and tracks patient's conditions and provides immediate medical advice.

The Biochip, co-developed by Mackay Memorial Hospital, National Taipei University of Technology, and TCNT, is now conducting clinical experiments in Mackay Memorial Hospital, expecting to test its accuracy on 400-1,000 patients.  WH Chang, the principal investigator and deputy superintendent of Mackay Memorial Hospital, states that the preliminary result is satisfying that each screening takes only 12 to 15 minutes to complete.

Heart diseases rank the second among the top 10 causes of death in Taiwan, and many of which died from myocardial infarction. WH Chang points out that according to the latest research report, most of the patients experience chest pain or angina pectoris one month before the heart attack. From his 20-year experiences in the ER, most patients pass away because they neglect the symptoms.

“We found out human bodies will generate myocardial enzymes when blood vessels are blocked and heart muscles start to necrose,” states WH Chang. Therefore, we applied that to develop the Biochip, determining if a patient is under high heart attack risk by detecting abnormal myocardial enzymes content in the blood. Patients with heart attack concerns can squeeze one drop of blood into the chip, which is the same size as a pregnancy test kit, and wait for 10 minutes to see the result on a cloud-based system via cell phone or computer. The biochip is estimated to be available on the market in one year.  

“The test result not only shows blood myocardial enzymes content but also provides medical advice, such as seeking immediate medical attention or periodic visits at the outpatient clinic, reducing unnecessary medical wastes,” WH Chang further explains

“The accuracy of the Biochip is up to 90 percent. That is to say, there is still 10 percent of the patients with high heart attack risk remain low blood myocardial enzymes content, causing inaccurate test results. Therefore, patients with history of myocardial infarction, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension are not recommended to take the test without a doctor’s supervision.

“The blood myocardial enzymes content is a key indicator for doctors in the ER to determine medical treatments. It’s an excellent news that patients with heart attack history now can monitor their health conditions at home,” says Huang You Jiun, the attending physician of the Division of Cardiology in Cathay General Hospital Xizhi. He also reminds that common symptoms for myocardial infarction are persistent chest tightness, chest pain, and cold sweat. Once those symptoms occur persistently, medical advice is strongly suggested.

2016/05/19

Source of the source: chinatimes

http://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20160519000788-260113