The realm of artificial intelligence (AI) seemingly has no bounds, and cardiologists at Endeavor Health are finding ways AI can improve care and the patient experience.
Doctors are already using AI to read and provide preliminary interpretations of echocardiograms, ultrasounds of the heart that show its structure and how well it pumps blood.
Echocardiograms require expert analysis to interpret the results. This work includes evaluating many variables and obtaining a large number of measurements, which can take up to 30 minutes per exam.
Physicians and technicians often read 25 or more echocardiograms per day. For a human, this gets time consuming. But AI can provide validated measurements in the blink of an eye, which allows the sonographer and cardiologist to focus on diagnosis and interpretation. Not only does the technology save time, it increases the consistency of measurements and stacks up well to human readers.
As one of the first sites in the Midwest to use AI technology clinically in the echocardiography lab, Endeavor Health experts have found tremendous potential to improve diagnostic capabilities to help patients.
Endeavor Health cardiologists are also studying the use of AI to help assess someone’s risk of a heart attack, and whether immediate intervention is needed.
In these cases, AI can analyze an electrocardiogram (EKG) — a test that records the heart’s electrical activity — to quickly identify patterns that may signal a serious blockage and the need for immediate evaluation in the cardiac catheterization lab.
“This program can take a quick look at an EKG and tell me if the patient needs to go to cath lab immediately,” said Arman Qamar, MD, a cardiologist at Endeavor Health. “The advantage is it can help us avoid a more invasive test and lower the risk of an additional procedure for the patient. It can also streamline the cath lab workflow and help us decide more quickly whether a patient needs a stent.”
Once a patient is in the cath lab, physicians use an angiogram, an imaging test that shows blood flow through the heart’s arteries. AI can then analyze the angiogram to help predict whether a blockage is affecting blood flow enough to require a stent, said Dr. Qamar. Physicians are also researching ways AI can personalize medicine, particularly in helping to assess an individual’s risk of heart disease.
Polygenic risk scores use a number of variants to help gauge someone’s risk for a heart attack. Dr. Qamar said he would like to see AI analyze multiple risk assessment tools to provide a more robust view of a patient’s cardiovascular risk factors.
“Another thing I would like to do for the future is develop a tool using AI to analyze an angiogram and predict a patient’s heart function and risk for developing AFib, heart disease or heart attack in the coming years,” Dr. Qamar said.
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