Comparison Between a Single-Lead ECG Garment Device and a Holter Monitor: A Signal Quality Assessment.

Wearable electronics are increasingly common and useful as health monitoring devices, many of which feature the ability to record a single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). However, recording the ECG commonly requires the user to touch the device to complete the lead circuit, which prevents continuous data acquisition. An alternative approach to enable continuous monitoring without user initiation is to embed the leads in a garment. This study assessed ECG data obtained from the YouCare device (a novel sensorized garment) via comparison with a conventional Holter monitor. A cohort of thirty patients (age range: 20-82 years; 16 females and 14 males) were enrolled and monitored for twenty-four hours with both the YouCare device and a Holter monitor. ECG data from both devices were qualitatively assessed by a panel of three expert cardiologists and quantitatively analyzed using specialized software. Patients also responded to a survey about the comfort of the YouCare device as compared to the Holter monitor. The YouCare device was assessed to have 70% of its ECG signals as "Good", 12% as "Acceptable", and 18% as "Not Readable". The R-wave, independently recorded by the YouCare device and Holter monitor, were synchronized within measurement error during 99.4% of cardiac cycles. In addition, patients found the YouCare device more comfortable than the Holter monitor (comfortable 22 vs. 5 and uncomfortable 1 vs. 18, respectively). Therefore, the quality of ECG data collected from the garment-based device was comparable to a Holter monitor when the signal was sufficiently acquired, and the garment was also comfortable.

Validation of a New and Straightforward Algorithm to Evaluate Signal Quality during ECG Monitoring with Wearable Devices Used in a Clinical Setting.

BACKGROUND: Wearable devices represent a new approach for monitoring key clinical parameters, such as ECG signals, for research and health purposes. These devices could outcompete medical devices in terms of affordability and use in out-clinic settings, allowing remote monitoring. The major limitation, especially when compared to implantable devices, is the presence of artifacts. Several authors reported a relevant percentage of recording time with poor/unusable traces for ECG, potentially hampering the use of these devices for this purpose. For this reason, it is of the utmost importance to develop a simple and inexpensive system enabling the user of the wearable devices to have immediate feedback on the quality of the acquired signal, allowing for real-time correction. METHODS: A simple algorithm that can work in real time to verify the quality of the ECG signal (acceptable and unacceptable) was validated. Based on simple statistical parameters, the algorithm was blindly tested by comparison with ECG tracings previously classified by two expert cardiologists. RESULTS: The classifications of 7200 10s-signal samples acquired on 20 patients with a commercial wearable ECG monitor were compared. The algorithm has an overall efficiency of approximately 95%, with a sensitivity of 94.7% and a specificity of 95.3%. CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate that even a simple algorithm can be used to classify signal coarseness, and this could allow real-time intervention by the subject or the technician.

Electrocardiogram Monitoring Wearable Devices and Artificial-Intelligence-Enabled Diagnostic Capabilities: A Review.

Worldwide, population aging and unhealthy lifestyles have increased the incidence of high-risk health conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, sleep apnea, and other conditions. Recently, to facilitate early identification and diagnosis, efforts have been made in the research and development of new wearable devices to make them smaller, more comfortable, more accurate, and increasingly compatible with artificial intelligence technologies. These efforts can pave the way to the longer and continuous health monitoring of different biosignals, including the real-time detection of diseases, thus providing more timely and accurate predictions of health events that can drastically improve the healthcare management of patients. Most recent reviews focus on a specific category of disease, the use of artificial intelligence in 12-lead electrocardiograms, or on wearable technology. However, we present recent advances in the use of electrocardiogram signals acquired with wearable devices or from publicly available databases and the analysis of such signals with artificial intelligence methods to detect and predict diseases. As expected, most of the available research focuses on heart diseases, sleep apnea, and other emerging areas, such as mental stress. From a methodological point of view, although traditional statistical methods and machine learning are still widely used, we observe an increasing use of more advanced deep learning methods, specifically architectures that can handle the complexity of biosignal data. These deep learning methods typically include convolutional and recurrent neural networks. Moreover, when proposing new artificial intelligence methods, we observe that the prevalent choice is to use publicly available databases rather than collecting new data.

Trastuzumab resumption after extremely severe cardiotoxicity in metastatic breast cancer patient: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Trastuzumab-related cardiotoxicity has been reported in patients receiving trastuzumab concurrently with other agents, especially with anthracyclines. Cardiac function damage is generally rare, precox and mild with trastuzumab alone. CASE PRESENTATION: We report the case of a 49 year-old woman affected by metastatic breast cancer who developed trastuzumab-related cardiogenic shock due to pump failure (with LVEF of about 15%) after three months of treatment. After a long hospitalization in the cardiac intensive care unit and a proper treatment, LVEF increased to 50% and, due to a severe progression of disease, trastuzumab was resumed and continued for more than one year. CONCLUSION: This is a case of particularly severe cardiotoxicity related to trastuzumab treatment, which was recovered with pharmacological treatment and the temporary discontinuation of the treatment. Trastuzumab was safely resumed after clinical and echocardiographic parameters improvement.

Atrial fibrillation in amyloidotic cardiomyopathy: prevalence, incidence, risk factors and prognostic role.

BACKGROUND: Although atrial fibrillation (AF) is a known complication of amyloidotic cardiomyopathy (AC), a precise pathophysiological and prognostic characterization is not available. We therefore aimed to assess prevalence, incidence, risk factors and prognostic significance of AF in light-chain (AL), hereditary transthyretin-related (m-ATTR) and non-mutant transthyretin-related (wt-ATTR) AC. METHODS: Retrospective study of 262 patients with AC (123 AL, 94 m-ATTR, 45 wt-ATTR) from a single center. RESULTS: AF prevalence was 15% (AL 9%, m-ATTR 11%, wt-ATTR 40%). During a median follow-up of 1.2 years 11 patients developed AF (2.1% person-years). Age, heart failure (HF), left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction, renal involvement, left atrial size and right atrial pressure were independently associated with AF. AF was associated with incident HF but not with increased mortality. All AF patients were prescribed warfarin and none suffered thromboembolic events. CONCLUSIONS: In AC the prevalence of AF varies widely according to etiology with a mean value of 15% that reaches 40% in wt-ATTR amyloidosis. Age, HF, LV ejection fraction, left atrial size and right atrial pressure were the main independent risk factors, while wall thickness and etiology were not the main independent risk factors. AF does not seem to impact all-cause mortality but was strongly associated with prevalent and incident HF.

Fundus autofluorescence imaging in hereditary ATTR amyloidosis with ocular involvement.

UNLABELLED: Fundus autofluorescence (AF) is a non-invasive technique for the evaluation of intrinsic autofluorescence of the tissues within the eye. In recent years, autofluorescence has become an important diagnostic tool for the assessment of various ocular diseases. A previous study has found that ex vivo Aß amyloid plaques in the retina of a transgenic mouse model appear hyper-autofluorescent (hyper-AF) under specific wavelengths (excitation at 830 nm, emission at 630). We report the first description of hyper-AF ocular findings in a case of transthyretin-related familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP) associated with ocular involvement using AF imaging. A 47-year-old woman from Italy presented to our institution with a history of early onset FAP with ocular involvement due to the rare amyloidogenic transthyretin Glu54Lys mutation. AF imaging showed hyper-AF amyloid deposits associated with retinal vessels in both eyes and a hyper-AF amyloid deposit anterior to the optic disk in the right eye. CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE: Further studies in FAP patients with different types of genetic mutations and various disease-stages are needed to better establish if non-invasive AF imaging is useful in detecting ocular amyloidosis.

Cardiac involvement in hereditary-transthyretin related amyloidosis.

Hereditary transthyretin-related amyloidosis remains a widely underdiagnosed condition, owing to its extreme phenotypic variability: the clinical spectrum of the disease ranges from an almost exclusive neurologic involvement to strictly cardiac manifestations. This heterogeneity is linked to several factors including specific transthyretin mutations, geographic distribution and endemic vs. non-endemic aggregation type. The existence of exclusively or predominantly cardiac phenotypes makes the recognition of the disease very challenging since it can mimic other more common causes of left ventricular "hypertrophy". Assessment of such patients should include an active search for possible red flags that can indicate the correct final diagnosis.

Short- and long-term prognostic significance of ST-segment elevation in lead aVR in patients with non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome.

We sought to evaluate the prognostic significance of ST-segment elevation (STE) in lead aVR in unselected patients with non-STE acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS). We enrolled 1,042 consecutive patients with NSTE-ACS. Patients were divided into 5 groups according to the following electrocardiographic (ECG) patterns on admission: (1) normal electrocardiogram or no significant ST-T changes, (2) inverted T waves, (3) isolated ST deviation (ST depression [STD] without STE in lead aVR or transient STE), (4) STD plus STE in lead aVR, and (5) ECG confounders (pacing, right or left bundle branch block). The main angiographic end point was left main coronary artery (LM) disease as the culprit artery. Clinical end points were in-hospital and 1-year cardiovascular death defined as the composite of cardiac death, fatal stroke, and fatal bleeding. Prevalence of STD plus STE in lead aVR was 13.4%. Rates of culprit LM disease and in-hospital cardiovascular death were 8.1% and 3.8%, respectively. On multivariable analysis, patients with STD plus STE in lead aVR (group 4) showed an increased risk of culprit LM disease (odds ratio 4.72, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.31 to 9.64, p <0.001) and in-hospital cardiovascular mortality (odds ratio 5.58, 95% CI 2.35 to 13.24, p <0.001) compared to patients without any ST deviation (pooled groups 1, 2, and 5), whereas patients with isolated ST deviation (group 3) did not. At 1-year follow-up 127 patients (12.2%) died from cardiovascular causes. On multivariable analysis, STD plus STE in lead aVR was a stronger independent predictor of cardiovascular death (hazard ratio 2.29, 95% CI 1.44 to 3.64, p <0.001) than isolated ST deviation (hazard ratio 1.52, 95% CI 0.98 to 2.36, p = 0.06). In conclusion, STD plus STE in lead aVR is associated with high-risk coronary lesions and predicts in-hospital and 1-year cardiovascular deaths in patients with NSTE-ACS. Therefore, this promptly available ECG pattern could be useful to improve risk stratification and management of patients with NSTE-ACS.

Transthyretin-related amyloidoses and the heart: a clinical overview.

A nonhereditary form of systemic amyloidosis associated with wild-type transthyretin causes heart involvement predominantly in elderly men (systemic senile amyloidosis, or SSA). However, hereditary transthyretin-related amyloidosis (ATTR) is the most frequent form of familial systemic amyloidosis, a group of severe diseases with variable neurological and organ involvement. ATTR remains a challenging and widely underdiagnosed condition, owing to its extreme phenotypic variability: the clinical spectrum of the disease ranges from an almost exclusive neurologic involvement to a strictly cardiac presentation. Such heterogeneity principally results from differential effects of the various reported transthyretin mutations, the geographic region the patient is from and, in the case of the most common mutation, Val30Met, whether or not large foci of cases occur (endemic versus nonendemic aggregation). Genetic or environmental factors (such as age, sex, and amyloid fibril composition) also contribute to the heterogeneity of ATTR, albeit to a lesser extent. The existence of exclusively or predominantly cardiac phenotypes should lead clinicians to consider the possibility of ATTR in all patients who present with an unexplained increase in left ventricular wall thickness at echocardiography. Assessment of such patients should include an active search for possible red flags that can point to the correct final diagnosis.

[Electrocardiographic diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction in the aera of primary percutaneous coronary intervention and hub and spoke networks]. / La diagnosi elettrocardiografica di infarto miocardico acuto nell'era dell'angioplastica primaria e delle reti hub and spoke.

More than a century after it was invented, standard ECG is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. With regard to acute ischemic heart disease, this phenomenon is due mainly to the availability of large databases that in an ordered and predefined manner collect patient ECG patterns along side their clinical and coronary angiography details as well as outcome data. The present review critically analyses the diagnostic role of standard ECG in acute coronary syndromes with or without ST-segment elevation (STEMI and NSTEMI, respectively) and focuses on interpretation pitfalls and patterns that can contribute to therapeutic decision-making. In front of a patient with a clinical presentation suggestive of acute myocardial infarction the ECG can help answer many questions. In case a STEMI is suspected: are we sure we can exclude an infarction? (the problem of false negatives); are we sure it is a real infarction and not a false positive? Which is the obstructed coronary artery and at what level? Has there been reperfusion? In case an NSTEMI is suspected: are we sure it is a real myocardial infarction, rather than a pulmonary embolism or an aortic dissection? Are we sure it is NSTEMI rather than a "masked" dorsal STEMI? Which coronary substrate and what ischemia extension can we hypothesize in this patient? In particular, is the substrate of such high risk suggesting an emergency invasive approach?

Exercise stress echocardiography is superior to rest echocardiography in predicting left ventricular reverse remodelling and functional improvement after cardiac resynchronization therapy.

AIMS: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) improves functional capacity and survival in heart failure. However, one-third of patients fail to respond to CRT. Resting left ventricular (LV) dyssynchrony assessed by echocardiography (ECHO) showed discordant results in identifying CRT responders. LV dyssynchrony can totally change during exercise. Aim of this study was to evaluate whether exercise dyssynchrony could select responders to CRT. METHODS AND RESULTS: Sixty-four patients scheduled for CRT implantation performed bicycle exercise ECHO in semi-supine position on an exercise tilting table before and 6 months after CRT implantation. Tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) was acquired both at rest and during exercise to detect LV mechanical dyssynchrony. Predictive values for CRT response were 70% for rest TDI and 89% for exercise TDI (P = 0.01). Exercise LV dyssynchrony was the only parameter independently associated with follow-up improvement of rest ejection fraction and LV volume during multivariable analysis (P < 0.001). Functional improvement at 6-min walking test was statistically higher in patients with exercise dyssynchrony (P = 0.005), and not different considering rest dyssynchrony (P = 0.30). CONCLUSION: Exercise intraventricular dyssynchrony assessed by exercise TDI ECHO is a strong independent predictor of CRT response. It could be used to select candidates for CRT, thus reducing ineffective implantations of biventricular pacemakers.