Micro Bubble Techniques for Detecting Heart Attacks

According to the American Heart Association, about 1.2 million Americans suffer a new or recurrent heart attack every year. A heart attack occurs when the blood flow to the heart muscle is severely reduced or cut off entirely. Ischemia is when the heart muscle is starved for oxygen and nutrients. A heart attack or myocardial infarction is when damage or death of part of the heart muscle occurs.

Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) Chest Pain Center in Portland, Oregon, is the first medical center on the West Coast to use a revolutionary new technique to quickly detect a heart attack. The result has been a totally new approach to treating chest pain.

The electrocardiogram and blood enzyme readings have been routinely used to determine if someone has had a heart attack, but these techniques typically take almost seven hours to show signs of the heart attack. Speed and accuracy are critical in diagnosing heart attacks because "time is muscle." With the new microbubble technology, the results are there within one hour. The swift diagnosis can and does save lives by allowing the medical team to administer blood thinners and other appropriate therapies to ward off further heart damage. Unfortunately, there are only a few centers in the nation using this technique.

If there is a blockage, the heart muscle begins to die in 30 minutes and if left untreated, the damage will be complete within six hours. Swift diagnosis is crucial and the MCE can do this. The name of this quick, new technique is myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE). At this time, every patient who enters OHSU with undiagnosed chest pain receives an MCE. Over 50 a month are being performed. MCE enables specially trained cardiologists to look directly at the heart muscle and tell instantly whether damage has occurred.