Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a heart attack. Every three and half minutes, someone will die of a stroke.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for everyone in the United States. Did you know, one in five heart attacks is silent? That means the damage is done, but the person is not even aware they had one.
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That’s why being able to predict changes in your heart, organs, and arteries is vital to preventing the worst from happening. Now, the first-ever wearable patch may be able to predict cardiovascular problems earlier than ever before.
Research shows that 80% of all heart disease can be prevented by knowing and managing risk factors. That’s why the team inside a UCSD lab is working on something new.
“We are working on soft stretchable sensors,” said UCSD nanoengineer Boyu Liu
“This is the ultrasonic patch we are developing,” said UCSD material sciences student Sai Thou.
“This device can provide continuous long-term monitoring of what’s going on in the heart,” said Sheng Xu, a nanoengineer at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering
This group of engineers is the first to develop a flexible, wearable, ultrasound patch.
“With ultrasound, we can penetrate the tissue and get very deep targets,” Liu said.
“For example, I can easily attach it to my clothing artery like this,” Thou demonstrates.
Embedded in a sheet of flexible polymer is an array of millimeter-sized ultrasound transducers. When worn on the neck or chest, it can penetrate the tissue, monitor blood flow, blood pressure, and heart function, in hopes of predicting a heart attack or stroke.
“We can use sophisticated algorithms to predict what’s going to happen in the next minute, in the next hour, or in the next few days,” Xu said.
Knowing how fast the blood flows through the vessels can help diagnose blood clots, heart valve problems, poor circulation and blockages in the arteries, and help doctors save your life.
In tests, the patch performed as well as commercial ultrasound probes, which are currently used in doctor’s offices. Although they still have more testing to do, the researchers at UCSD are hopeful that this could be made available to doctors and their patients in the next two years.