A smart-technology wearable wristband may be able to automatically detect cardiac arrest, potentially leading to faster medical assistance and increased survival odds when cardiac arrest occurs outside of a hospital, according to new research published in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.
The DETECT‑1b study analyzed data for 49 adults in the Netherlands with abnormal heart rhythms who underwent a medical procedure in which a life-threatening heart rhythm was briefly induced. During treatment for irregular heartbeats, pulseless ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation was induced. The algorithm‑based wristband detected cardiac arrest 92% of the time, including 100% of ventricular fibrillation cases and 90% of pulseless ventricular tachycardia cases.
“Our findings are important because many out-of-hospital cardiac arrests are unwitnessed. A smart technology wristband capable of automatically detecting cardiac arrest and triggering an alert could function as a digital witness,” said study senior author Judith Bonnes, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands. “With the device automatically notifying emergency services or nearby trained responders, help could arrive sooner, which may significantly improve survival chances.”
The device uses a light-based technique (photoplethysmography algorithm) to continuously monitor changes in blood flow in the wrist. Unlike previous approaches, this method allows continuous and unobtrusive monitoring in daily life, said lead study author Roos Edgar, M.Sc., a technical physician at Radboud University Medical Center. “This is the first study to externally validate such an algorithm using patient data, which is an important step toward developing a reliable detection system for real-world use,” she said.
In a future application, the algorithm could alert nearby lay rescuers, emergency services, or both. “The goal is to connect the wristband to emergency dispatch centers and volunteer responder networks in the Netherlands so that nearby rescuers and ambulance services can be alerted immediately when cardiac arrest is detected,” Bonnes said.
Although the study is small, the results are promising. “What is more impressive than the ability of this technology to detect cardiac arrest is the fairly low frequency of false positives it detected,” said Cameron Dezfulian, M.D., FAHA, chair of the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Science Symposium Program Committee, who was not involved in the study. “This study parallels findings from a study in Canada and one in the U.S. that shows this technology has great potential.”
However, Dezfulian noted that pulseless electrical activity remains the most common presenting rhythm in all cardiac arrest but accounts for a small number of the validation data for such wearable sensors. “Further research will be important,” he said.
The research was conducted in a controlled clinical setting, a limitation. The system’s effectiveness and reliability in real-world conditions still need evaluation in future studies. The DETECT-1b study is part of the broader DETECT project, a collaboration of several hospitals and a company in the Netherlands developing a smart wristband for automated detection of cardiac arrest and alerting emergency services.
More information about the study is available in the manuscript online. The American Heart Association provides additional resources on what is cardiac arrest.
