A novel, wrist-worn sensor that provides a bloodless estimation of troponin-I levels in five minutes was found to be about 90% accurate, according to research presented at ACC.23/WCC and simultaneously published in European Heart Journal - Digital Health.

Partho P. Sengupta, MD, FACC, et al., enrolled 239 patients hospitalized with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) at five sites in India. Patients wore a wrist-based sensor that detects the presence of troponin-I with infrared light, predicting its level with a machine learning algorithm. Participants also underwent a blood draw to assess troponin-I levels, an electrocardiogram, and either an echocardiogram or coronary angiogram. Researchers used data from the first three sites to train the model, and the last two sites were used to test its accuracy.

Results indicated that the system predicted troponin-I levels with about 90% accuracy in patients presenting with ACS. In addition, patients with abnormal troponin-I levels as measured by the device were about four times as likely to have an obstructed artery compared with those with a negative troponin result. 

Researchers added that more studies are needed to further validate and refine the system, including studies to determine whether biological variability – such as differences in skin tone, wrist size, skin health or other factors – could affect the device’s performance.

“This is an exciting opportunity because it increases our capability for early diagnosis of heart attacks in both community settings and in acute care environments,” said Sengupta. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, but this approach could potentially address access issues and prioritization issues, for example by shortening the time to triage or being used by emergency responders to plan the patient’s journey before they even arrive at the hospital.”

Clinical Topics: Stable Ischemic Heart Disease, Chronic Angina

Keywords: ACC Annual Scientific Session, ACC23, Troponin I, Myocardial Infarction, Angina, Stable

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