Scientists Develop

　　Ways of Detecting Heart Attack

　　German researchers have come up with a new generation of defibrillators and early ― warning software aimed at offering heart patients greater protection from sudden death from cardiac arrest.

　　In Germany alone around 100,000 people die annually as a result of cardiac arrest and many of these cases are caused by disruption to the heart's rhythm. Those most at risk are patients who have already suffered a heart attack, and for years the use of defibrillators has proved useful in diagnosing life-threatening disruptions to heart rhythms and correcting them automatically by intervening within seconds. These devices take on a range of functions, such as that of pacemaker.

　　Heart specialists at Freiburg's University Clinic have now achieved a breakthrough with an implanted defibrillator capable of generating a six ― channel electrocardiogram (ECG) within the body. This integrated system allows early diagnosis of acute blood ― flow problems and a pending heart attack. It will be implanted in patients for the first time this year. Meanwhile, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Mathematics in Kaiserslautern have developed new computer software that renders of ECG data more precise.

　　The overwhelming majority of patients at risk will not have an implanted defibrillator and must for this reason undergo regular ECGs. "Many of the current programs only take into account a linear correlation of the data. We are, however, making use of a non ― linear process that reveals the chaotic patterns of heart beats as an open and complex system," Hagen Knaf says, "In this way changes in the heart beats over time can be monitored and individual variations in patients taken into account." An old study of ECG data, based upon 600 patients who had suffered a subsequent heart attack, enabled the researchers to compare risks and to show that the new software evaluates the data considerably better.

　　科學(xué)家探索發(fā)現(xiàn)

　　心臟病的方法

　　德國(guó)研究者們發(fā)明了新一代的除顫器和旨在為心臟病人提供更多保護(hù)，使他們免遭心臟停止導(dǎo)致的突然死亡的早期預(yù)報(bào)軟件。

　　僅在德國(guó)每年就有10萬(wàn)人死于心臟停止。其中大部分是由于心律中斷導(dǎo)致的。危險(xiǎn)最大的是那些已經(jīng)犯過一次心臟病的病人。幾年來除顫器被證實(shí)在探測(cè)心律中止和在幾秒鐘內(nèi)實(shí)施自動(dòng)干涉以調(diào)整心律的診斷中是有用的。這種方法起到了很多作用，例如起搏器。

　　弗萊伯大學(xué)診所的心臟病老師已經(jīng)在內(nèi)置除顫器方面取得了突破性成就。這種除顫器可以在體內(nèi)產(chǎn)生六個(gè)頻道的心電圖。這個(gè)綜合體系使血液流通問題和即將發(fā)生的心臟病可被早些診斷出來。今年它將第一次被植入病人體內(nèi)。同時(shí)，凱瑟?jiǎng)谔氐母诤饘?shí)用數(shù)學(xué)學(xué)院的研究者開發(fā)了一種新計(jì)算機(jī)軟件。這種軟件使心電圖數(shù)據(jù)更加準(zhǔn)確。

　　大部分有風(fēng)險(xiǎn)的患者不能用內(nèi)置除顫器，因此必須接受常規(guī)的心電圖檢查。“目前的許多計(jì)劃只把數(shù)據(jù)的線性關(guān)系考慮在內(nèi)。但是我們現(xiàn)在使用的是能夠?qū)⑿呐K跳動(dòng)的混亂模式作為一個(gè)直觀而又復(fù)雜的系統(tǒng)揭示出來的非線性處理方法”。海根?納夫說，“這樣心臟跳動(dòng)頻率的變化就會(huì)受到控制，而病人個(gè)人的特征也會(huì)得到考慮?！币粋€(gè)基于600位連續(xù)犯心臟病的患者的以前的心電圖數(shù)據(jù)研究使科學(xué)家們能夠比較兩種風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，結(jié)果顯示新軟件明顯能更好地處理心電圖數(shù)據(jù)。