Aged Care Insite Issue 92 | December 2015 - January 2016 | Page 12

news

A heartbeat’s chance

(Left to right) Dean of Sydney Nursing School Donna Waters, Dr Lis Neubeck and professor Robyn Gallagher.

Team studying ways to prevent strokes
by detecting atrial fibrillation wins
grant to continue research.
By Dallas Bastian

S

ydney Nursing School researchers have been
awarded a $200,000 grant at the NSW Cardiovascular
Research Network State of the Heart Showcase and
Awards ceremony.
The funding will allow the University of Sydney team to further
research stroke prevention through early detection of atrial
fibrillation – an irregular heart rhythm that can cause blood clots
to form in the heart and travel to the brain – via technologies such
as smartphones.
“Widespread screening for asymptomatic atrial fibrillation could
cost-effectively reduce strokes and their associated disability, and
help save lives,” said University of Sydney and Heart Research
Institute cardiology professor Ben Freedman, co-author of a recent
article on the research in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. “But this is not yet widely recommended in guidelines.”
Research lead Dr Lis Neubeck said: “It’s been shown that strokes
can be prevented through early identification of atrial fibrillation
(AF) and up to two-thirds of people with AF don’t know they have
it. We need a way to find people who have asymptomatic AF
before they get a stroke, since treatments with blood-thinning
medications are very effective in preventing strokes.”
She said the simplest way of testing for atrial fibrillation was a
pulse check, but added it is not a very sensitive method. “As an
alternative, we’ve been investigating an electrocardiogram (ECG)
device that attaches to a smartphone,” she explained. “In just

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30 seconds, the hand-held device can check the ECG and tell if
the rhythm is likely to be atrial fibrillation.”
The research team previously showed how community
pharmacists and practice nurses could use the ECG device to
screen for atrial fibrillation. They will now turn their attention to the
t