Wearable Wristband Shows Promise in Detecting Cardiac Arrest, Study Finds
New research published in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology demonstrates that a smart wristband using photoplethysmography can detect cardiac arrest with 92% accuracy in a clinical setting, potentially enabling faster emergency response and improved survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
New research published today in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association, suggests that a smart technology-based wearable wristband may be able to automatically detect cardiac arrest, potentially leading to faster medical assistance and increased survival odds when cardiac arrest occurs outside of a hospital.
The DETECT-1b study, conducted in the Netherlands, analyzed data from 49 adults with abnormal heart rhythms who underwent a medical procedure in which a life-threatening heart rhythm was briefly induced. The algorithm-based wristband detected cardiac arrest 92% of the time, including 100% of ventricular fibrillation events and 90% of pulseless ventricular tachycardia events.
“Our findings are important because many out-of-hospital cardiac arrests are unwitnessed. A smart technology wristband capable of automatically detecting cardiac arrest and triggering an alert could function as a digital witness,” said study senior author Judith Bonnes, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands. “With the device automatically notifying emergency services or nearby trained responders, help could arrive sooner, which may significantly improve survival chances.”
The device uses a light-based technique (photoplethysmography algorithm) to measure changes in blood flow in the wrist, allowing continuous and unobtrusive monitoring. This approach differs from previous methods, which were not designed for daily life. “This is the first study to externally validate such an algorithm using patient data, which is an important step toward developing a reliable detection system for real-world use,” said lead study author Roos Edgar, M.Sc., a technical physician at Radboud University Medical Center.
During the study, 59 shockable cardiac arrest events were recorded. The wristband accurately detected cardiac arrest in 92% of cases, with only nine false positives over 125 hours of recording. In per-patient analysis, considering only the first event per person, accuracy remained at 92%.
Cameron Dezfulian, M.D., FAHA, chair of the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Science Symposium Program Committee, who was not involved in the study, noted the significance of the low false positive rate. “What is more impressive than the ability of this technology to detect cardiac arrest is the fairly low frequency of false positives it detected,” said Dezfulian, senior faculty in pediatrics and critical care at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “This study parallels findings from a study in Canada and one in the U.S. that shows this technology has great potential.”
The research was conducted in a controlled clinical setting, which is a limitation. The system’s effectiveness and reliability in real-world conditions still need to be evaluated in future studies, Bonnes said. Future applications could connect the wristband to emergency dispatch centers and volunteer responder networks in the Netherlands so that nearby rescuers and ambulance services can be alerted immediately when cardiac arrest is detected.
Dezfulian also highlighted that pulseless electrical activity remains the most common presenting rhythm in all cardiac arrest but accounts for a small number of validation data for such wearable sensors, emphasizing the need for further research.
The DETECT-1b study is part of the broader DETECT project, a collaboration of several hospitals and a company in the Netherlands conducting studies to develop a smart wristband for automated detection of cardiac arrest and alerting emergency services.