New data supports wearable troponin-I sensor for heart attack diagnosis in real-world settings
A wrist-worn sensor that assesses troponin-1 levels through the skin without blood sampling has been shown to detect heart attacks with 90% accuracy in 5-minutes, potentially minimizing heart muscle damage.
A ground-breaking study using a wrist-worn troponin-1 sensor developed by RCE was presented on March 6 as a late-breaking clinical trial at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) annual meeting and simultaneously published online in the European Heart Journal Digital Health. The bracelet-like device assesses levels of the heart-damage biomarker troponin-1 through the skin in 5-minutes, without blood sampling, and was found to predict observance of obstructed arteries with 90% accuracy. This acceleration in detection of acute myocardial infarction (MI) has the potential to reduce time to intervention and improve outcomes in real-world settings.
“Time is muscle,” said RCE’s CEO and founder, Atandra Burman. “With this wrist-worn sensor, we can provide real-time monitoring of heart muscle injury that can empower clinicians in a much-needed timely intervention in patients with an impending heart attack.”
The wearable sensor uses infrared light to detect the presence of troponin-I in the blood through the skin and sends a reading via Bluetooth to a cloud-connected platform, which estimates the biomarker’s concentration using a machine learning algorithm, all within a few minutes. Currently, when troponin-1 testing is indicated by a patient presenting with chest pains but without definitive electrocardiogram evidence of MI, there is a time-lag for blood sampling and laboratory analysis of the sample before the result can be acted upon with medication to clear blocked cardiac blood vessels.
The study included 238 patients hospitalized with acute coronary syndrome across 5 sites. The individuals were equipped with the new wearable and also had blood drawn to test for troponin-I levels, an electrocardiogram and either an echocardiogram or coronary angiogram to image blood flow through the heart. The device’s results were found to correlate well with clinical evidence of a heart attack.
“People with abnormal troponin levels as measured by the device were about 4-times as likely to have an obstructed artery compared to people with a negative result using the sensor”, said lead study author Partho Sengupta of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in the US, who is an advisor to RCE. “With this level of accuracy, if you use this device and it comes out positive, you’re fairly sure this patient can be admitted for fast tracking diagnostic tests, treatment and intervention”.
Further studies on the wearable sensor are needed to establish whether factors such as differences in skin tone, wrist size or skin health affect the results. RCE is planning to investigate whether continuous measurements of troponin-I using the wearable, as opposed to a single test to determine whether a threshold has been reached, could provide additional clinical benefits. The company is also exploring application of the technology to detect other biomarkers.