A specific type of ultrasound called speckle-tracking echocardiography may detect heart disease complications from rheumatoid arthritis.
A specific type of ultrasound called speckle-tracking echocardiography may detect heart disease complications from rheumatoid arthritis, according to a study presented this week at The European League Against Rheumatism annual meeting in Berlin, Germany.
Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease that cause heart attacks and heart failure, but commonly used assessment tools are not detecting the risk often enough, researchers said.
To determine if there was a more reliable way to detect this problem, researchers from the Mayo Clinic studied 150 people, 100 patients who had RA and no known cardiovascular disease and 50 people with no history of RA or cardiovascular disease. All underwent echocardiograms that looked for myocardial strain, or speckle-tracking echocardiography.
The researchers found that patients with RA showed signs of cardiac impairment that was not seen among people without RA. Senior researcher, Sherine Gabriel, MD, said that the impairment seen in the images from the RA patients showed a unique pattern that could be used to indicate heart disease before patients have clinical signs.
“It’s potentially part of the answer,” said Gabriel. “Our research team here at Mayo is working to identify better ways to predict heart disease in persons with rheumatoid arthritis, including developing better risk scores, imaging tests and perhaps better blood tests. We’re also evaluating a number of immunological blood tests that could help us identify patients earlier, and exploring better imaging approaches like myocardial strain that can help us identify patients with RA who have heart problems as early as possible.”
The Reading Room: Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Cancer Screenings, and COVID-19
November 3rd 2020In this podcast episode, Dr. Shalom Kalnicki, from Montefiore and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discusses the disparities minority patients face with cancer screenings and what can be done to increase access during the pandemic.
Study Finds Transvaginal Ultrasound Unreliable for Detecting Endometrial Cancer in Black Patients
July 3rd 2024Utilizing a threshold of less than 5 mm of ultrasound-measured endometrial thickness, the authors of a new study noted an 11.4 percent false-negative probability for endometrial cancer in Black patients.
New Study Shows Non-Radiologists Interpreting 28 Percent of Imaging for Medicare Patients
June 28th 2024While radiologists interpreted approximately 99 percent of all non-cardiac CT, MRI and nuclear medicine studies in hospital and emergency department settings for Medicare beneficiaries, new research shows significantly less radiologist review of cardiac imaging and office-based imaging.
FDA Clears Pocket-Sized ECG System and AI Technology for Detection of Cardiac Conditions
June 27th 2024Using a reduced leadset and deep neural network algorithms trained on more than 175 million electrocardiograms, the KAI 12L technology reportedly detects up to 35 cardiac determinations, including acute myocardial infarction.