By IANS,
Washington : One of the world’s most powerful magnetic detectors is helping screen high-risk pregnant women for rare but very serious foetal heart rhythm problems.
The passive detector, mounted on a track above a table upon which the patient lies, is positioned over the belly where it picks up the faintest magnetic signals and sends the information back to a computer in an adjacent room. The test takes about an hour.
The Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, both at Milwaukee, and Hope Children’s Hospital, Chicago, have collaborated to create a laboratory for the diagnosis.
“It’s the only place in the country dedicated to evaluating rare and very serious foetal heart rhythm problems using bio-magnetism,” said Ron Wakai, professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) School of Medicine and Public Health, who created the lab.
“In a typical year, we see between 50 and 70 patients, the vast majority around their 25th week of pregnancy,” says Wakai.
The programme allows paediatric cardiologists and obstetricians to gather additional data and offer patients the best treatment options.
Janette Strasburger, paediatric cardiologist at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and professor of paediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin (both in Milwaukee), supervises each patient during the procedure along with her obstetrical research nurse, Gretchen Eckstein.
Strasburger and Wakai teamed up eight years ago to study how bio-magnetism could be used to diagnose foetal heart problems.
They were soon joined by Bettina Cuneo, paediatric cardiologist from Hope Children’s Hospital in Chicago, who also specialises in foetal cases.
With a solid scientific foundation now under their belts, the team has almost single-handedly created the emerging field of foetal cardiac arrhythmia care.
“We may determine that the foetus has a potentially fatal arrhythmia that must be treated immediately,” says Strasburger, according to an UWM release.
“While rare, this treatment might include medications that the mother takes, or direct shots of medication given by a pregnancy specialist, similar to an immunisation injection.”
“Currents flowing through the heart and brain generate these magnetic signals,” explains Wakai. “They are the same currents that generate electrical signals detected by EKGs and EEGs.”
The EKG is the standard test for adults with heart rhythm problems, but it doesn’t work on foetuses, adds Wakai.