LONDON: As the old saying almost goes, you wait ages for a study on artificial intelligence-enabled stethoscopes and then lo and behold, two come along almost at once.
Published within a week of each other in early February, the two papers show how AI can at least supplement or even outdo doctors when it comes to potentially life-saving early detection of heart disease.
The research is only the latest to suggest that perhaps the most familiar tool associated with doctors is about to be reinvented for the AI era.
"The AI correctly identified 98% of patients with severe aortic stenosis, the most common form of valve disease requiring surgery, and 94% of those with severe mitral regurgitation, where the heart valve doesn’t fully close and blood leaks backward across the valve," the University of Cambridge said, after a team of researchers analysed heart sounds from nearly 1,800 patients.
The Cambridge team deployed an algorithm “trained” to detect valve disease, which often does not get picked up until after it puts a patient’s life in danger.
“The technology, which works with digital stethoscopes, outperformed GPs at detecting valve disease, and could be used as a rapid screening tool in primary care,” the university said.
“Cardiac auscultation (listening using a scope) is a difficult skill, and it’s used less and less in busy GP surgeries,” said Anurag Agarwal from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, whose team’s findings were published on February 10 in npj Cardiovascular Health.
Five days earlier, the European Heart Journal released findings from a US-based team of scientists and doctors showing that an AI-enabled digital stethoscope “more than doubles sensitivity for detecting moderate to severe valvular heart disease” compared to a traditional device.
“The AI-stethoscope demonstrated significantly higher sensitivity in detecting the heart sound patterns that indicate valvular heart disease, with 92.3% sensitivity compared with 46.2% with the traditional stethoscope,” the European Society of Cardiology, the journal’s publisher, said in a statement.
“We hope this technology will allow patients to get faster access to an echocardiogram to formally diagnose their condition and then access treatment more quickly,” said lead researcher Rosalie McDonough.
Other similar studies carried out since 2023, including two by the Mayo Clinic in the US, show AI-enabled stethoscopes outdoing doctors when it comes to detecting pregnancy-related heart problems. – dpa
