Health | Cardiac arrest | What is "agonal breathing" and how to detect it can save lives | Technology and science | science

Special attention to those who suffer from heart failure often increases their chances of survival, but most people They do not know how to identify the alarm signals.

One of the most obvious signs that a person experiences a cardiac arrest is agonous breathingAn abnormal breathing pattern characterized by: panting and shortness of breath, in addition to strange vocalizations and involuntary tremors of the muscles.

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In this context, an intervention by cardiac resuscitation it can increase the chances of survival two or three times. This intervention requires that another person present can provide assistance as soon as possible. However, statistics show that often cardiac arrest occurs when the person is in the privacy of his home or outside the hospital.

For this reason, a team at the University of Washington has developed a digital tool that allows detect agonal breathing, According to an article published Wednesday by the magazine Digital Medicine, the group Nature.

The tool, which can work with s"Intelligent systems" like "Google Home", "Alexa" from Amazon or any other smartphone, allows the device to detect the sound of puffs typical of the agonal breathingand call for help.

During the test phase, during which scary breathing sounds captured during phone calls to emergency services were used, the tool detected them as such 97% of the time at a maximum distance of 6 meters.

Since often patients who suffer from cardiac arrest are obliviousOther people who come to your rescue record the sounds of agonizing breathing by placing the phone near the victim's mouth so that emergency personnel can determine if cardiopulmonary resuscitation is necessary.

Researchers at the University of Washington collected 162 calls between 2009 and 2017 and extracted 2.5 seconds at the beginning of each agonal breathing to complete a total of 236 audio cuts.

To test the tool, the researchers captured the recordings in different Smart devices, including an Alexa, an iPhone 5s and a Samsung Galaxy S4and used a variety of computer learning techniques to increase the data set to 7,316 slices.

Justin Chan, author of the article and PhD student at Allen School, said these recordings were used at different distances. "simulate how patients would ring in different parts of the room."

"We have also added various noise interferences such as cat and dog sounds, car horns, air conditioning … which we can normally hear during the night," Chan added.

"Many people he has smart speakers in his house and these devices They have incredible abilities that we can take advantage of, "said Shyam Gollakota, one of the authors of the project.

"We think of a system without physical contact, operating continuously by passively observing the bedroom to detect a case of agonal breathing, and to alert someone to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation ", he added.

"There is no immediate response," said Gollakota, "the device can automatically call the emergency service"

With information from EFE

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