MCG gets grant for cell phone study

A cell phone can do more than take pictures or send text -- it might soon improve treatment for heart attacks.

The Verizon Foundation has awarded a $50,000 grant to the Medical College of Georgia to study whether cell phones or similar handheld wireless devices can be used to read the electrocardiograms of potential heart attack patients in the field.

The work would reinforce what researchers at Duke University and elsewhere have already found in trying to reduce the time between a patient being picked up by an ambulance and getting treatment, such as an emergency catheterization to reopen clogged arteries.

In rural areas, hospitals might not be able to offer such treatment around the clock and at a moment's notice, even if they have it available, said MCG researcher Max Stachura, the director of the Center for Telehealth.

"We're talking about communities where the team might have to be assembled," Dr. Stachura said. "And if you actually wait until the patient gets to the hospital to make the call, then you've got the further delay of waiting for the team to be assembled."

The first challenge is being able to do the wireless transmission of the ECG from the field, which Dr. Stachura said he was working with other companies to do.

"In other words, we have mobilized the patient," he said. "We want to say it doesn't make any difference where the patient is."

Duke had success initially with faxing the ECG from the ambulance to the emergency department and was able to get close to the 90-minute goal of door to intervention, said Galen S. Wagner, an associate professor of medicine at Duke and the editor of the Journal of Electrocardiology.

Then the fax has to reach someone who can read it.

"If they have to call a cardiologist and have the cardiologist look at it, well, then that's going to be a delay," Dr. Wagner said.

The Duke researchers found that the ECGs could be transmitted to cell phones with screens, but they then had to find out whether cardiologists read them the same way they would if they were on paper, Dr. Wagner said. The Duke researchers found there was little difference in the diagnoses.

Dr. Stachura also plans to have cardiologists read electrocardiograms from previously diagnosed patients to see whether there is a difference or whether the device affects the ability to diagnose.

There is also the practical problem of getting the cardiologists to carry them and use them, he said. Verizon has devices, some of which haven't been introduced to the commercial market, that could be tested, Dr. Stachura said.

"They've got some pretty sophisticated handheld cell phones that are almost at the level of microcomputers," he said. "But they also have things that you and I haven't seen yet that they're developing."

Duke has used the handheld devices, and in one study, a North Carolina hospital reduced the time for patients whose results were successfully transmitted to a cardiologist from an average of 101 minutes to an average of 50 minutes.

There are other challenges, such as educating paramedics on how to recognize serious changes in the electrocardiogram so they are not overwhelming cardiologists, Dr. Stachura said.

Some hospitals might have to change policies to allow paramedics to take the patient on a gurney straight up to the cath lab, Dr. Wagner said.

"It really needs a whole reorganization, a relook, at how the system works because our system tends to work in pieces," he said. "For this to function, the system has to work in integration."

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.