Heart failure during pregnancy is a dangerous and often under-detected condition because common symptoms – shortness of breath, extreme fatigue and trouble breathing while lying down – are easily mistaken for typical pregnancy discomforts. Late-breaking research presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress on a Mayo Clinic study showed an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital stethoscope helped doctors identify twice as many cases of heart failure compared to a control group that received usual obstetric care and screening. Full study findings are published in Nature Medicine.
The trial was conducted in Nigeria, where more women experience pregnancy-related heart failure than anywhere in the world. The results also indicate that screening including the AI-enabled digital stethoscope were 12-times more likely than traditional screening to flag heart pump weakness when evaluated at an ejection fraction threshold lower than 45%, which is the cutoff indicating a specific type of heart failure called peripartum cardiomyopathy…
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