Using AI To Predict Heart Disease From X-Rays
Typically the risk of heart disease is calculated using a variety of factors that include age, race, sex, diabetes, lipid panels and a couple others. The problem with this method is that having access to all these factors is not always easy in electronic records. Additionally, having access to all these factors for a greater population to assess population health is even more complicated.
A team of doctors and scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an AI based approach to understand heart disease risk among patients using a chest x-ray. The key advantage in using an x-ray is that it is just one test that needs to be done and just one data point that needs to be considered. It is much easier to access a single X-ray than a bunch of different pieces of information that need separate tests to be collected.
The AI based method uses a single chest-x ray image to evaluate the risk of heart disease. The researchers used x-rays from over 40,000 patients to train their model and tested it with over 11,000 patients to see if it performs similarly to the current method. The researchers found that it did in fact do as well as the current method. To replace the standard method, the AI will still need to be tested further but it shows promise based on the study that the researchers performed. This is important for population health AI driven tools like these can be used as ways to figure out if a patient is at a high disease risk and be used to improve the health outcomes of patients as early diagnosis can really help slow down disease progression.
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The recall of the Philips breathing devices is going poorly
In June of 2021 the FDA issued a recall of the CPAP and BPAP breathing devices produced by Philip to help patients with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a serious sleep disorder where your breathing stops and starts while you are asleep.
The reason behind the recall was that the polyester-based polyurethane that was used to make the sound-proofing foam began breaking down and posing health risks. In total, there have been 90,000 adverse events and over 200 deaths attributed to these devices. The FDA is being heavily criticized about their poor response to the recall.
The process for an FDA recall is a slow and tedious one. It is, unfortunately, always a long battle, especially when it comes to medical devices. Even after the FDA issues a recall, they rely on a partnership with the medical device company where the FDA sets the rules and the company acts to reach out to patients and recall the devices or issue replacements and refunds. Philips has not received an order to issue refunds as of yet.
After the FDA investigation into the adverse events claims, they found that Philips should have been concerned about the foam degradation issues as early as 2015. The recall only being issued a decade later was in large part, due to Philips poor communication, internally and externally. Now, over a year after the recall is also plagued by poor communication.
Given that unlike car part recalls where the manufacturer knows the customer who purchased each of their vehicles, medical devices are sold via 3rd parties. Therefore, Philips does not know about every person who has bought one of their devices. However, the vendors should and Philips knows the vendors so they should have notified all of them to notify the patients. Except they did not. Out of 182, 28 reported not receiving that notification when the FDA reached out to them.
Furthermore, some replacement filters sent to patients have been reported to become loose and block the air intake valve. The entire situation is incredibly messy.
Broadly speaking, this system of reporting adverse reactions to medical devices that require companies to inform the FDA when their devices are malfunctioning has been likened by some to hiring a fox to guard the henhouse. Unfortunately, the FDA is severely understaffed for it to manage the complaints against every medical device and also monitor the companies during recalls. Given the many similar events that have occurred in the past decade, a new system for medical device recalls must be developed.
The Philips page detailing which devices have been recalled can be found here. Please forward the link to anyone you know who might be using one so they can seek out a physician's advice. There are issues surrounding that too which you can read about in this amazing article by STAT.
Featured Fake News
Most of the fake news this week has been surrounding Elon Musk or the world cup. The only fake news claims currently still circulating related to medicine are usually along the lines of “Most COVID-19 deaths are amongst the vaccinated”.
You can find a new example of that in this instagram post here:
Once again, the fact that most people dying from COVID-19 being vaccinated says nothing about the vaccine being dangerous if most people are vaccinated. If anything, it just begs the question how much worse it would be if most people were not vaccinated.
In the Washington Post article referenced in the IG post, the article goes down to discuss the importance of staying up to date on your vaccination and discussing the importance of the booster. Here is a screenshot taken from that same article discussing the trend:
You can read the full article here: The Washington Post
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