WinSenga expands access to prenatal care in Africa with smartphone-based ultrasound alternative
Wubwub. Wubwub. Wubwub.
It’s immense, the moment an ultrasound lets an expectant mother hear her unborn child’s heartbeat. But many pregnant women around the world never get to experience it. (more…)
Music straight from the heart: Could a cardiac arrhythmia have influenced famous works by the musical great?
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Could it be that when Ludwig van Beethoven composed some of the greatest masterpieces of all time that he was quite literally following his heart? (more…)
Watching films with stressful scenes can trigger changes to the heart’s beating pattern, reports a new study published in the journal Circulation, Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.
Although the changes were small, and not likely to be risky for normal healthy individuals, the team from UCL, King’s College London and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital found that watching an emotionally charged film clip caused a disturbance to the normal heartbeat and a significant increase in blood pressure. (more…)
Hospitals that continue CPR longer have better survival rates from cardiac arrests, according to a study published online Sept. 5 in The Lancet. The findings challenge the assumption that, if a pulse is not restored soon, continuing resuscitation efforts is futile.
The results also showed that patients who recovered after an extended CPR effort were no more likely to suffer brain damage than are patients revived after a shorter effort. (more…)
Researchers have made a major advance in efforts to regenerate damaged hearts. They discovered that transplanted heart muscle cells, grown from stem cells, electrically couple and beat in sync with the heart’s own mucle.
The grafts also reduced the incidence of arrhythmias (irregular heart rhythms) in a guinea pig model of myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack).
This finding from University of Washington-led research is reported in the Aug. 5 issue of Nature. (more…)
