Device predicted stroke by motion of the eye

March 5, 2013
________________________________________________________

According to the results of a small study led by researchers ‘Johns Hopkins Medicine’, in Baltimore, Maryland (USA) and published in ‘Stroke’, “An electronic device that measures head eye movements can successfully determine whether because of intense continuous dizziness can be a stroke or something benign.”

David Newman-Toker, associate professor of Neurology and Otolaryngology at the School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University and head of the study said: “We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on expensive companies working times that are unnecessary and probably, losing the opportunity to save tens of thousands of lives because it is not properly diagnosing dizziness or vertigo as symptoms of stroke. “

“If other larger studies confirm these results, the device could someday be the equivalent of an electrocardiogram (ECG) as a noninvasive simple test to rule out routine myocardial infarction in patients with chest pain. The universal use of the device could virtually eliminate deaths from misdiagnosis and save a lot of time and money.”

“To distinguish between a more benign condition such as dizziness related to an inner ear disorder, experts usually use three tests of eye movements that are essentially the effort to balance the system. In the hands of specialists, these bedside clinical tests (without the device) have been shown in several studies to be extremely precise, almost perfect and even better than MRI. “