Your bathroom break could become a heart checkup.
One company’s smart toilet seat can detect atrial fibrillation, or AFib — the most common heart rhythm disorder — just as reliably as the conventional EKG tests done in medical offices and hospitals, according to a study.
That’s a potential game-changer considering an estimated 12.1 million American adults are expected to be living with AFib by 2030. The condition causes the heart to beat too slowly, too quickly or irregularly, but many people don’t know they have it.
Around one-third of AFib patients don’t experience symptoms at all, making early detection critical.
German medical technology company Hamberger Medical developed the HARO EKG-seat, a smart toilet seat integrated with with EKG sensors similar to those used during the EKG tests performed in medical offices and hospitals.
The Hamberger Heart Study compared the toilet seat’s accuracy in detecting AFib with that of conventional medical EKG devices. Researchers found a high level of agreement between the toilet seat’s 6-lead EKG system and the standard 12-lead medical EKG, according to Hamberger Medical.
The company also emphasized how simple the EKG-seat is to use compared to a traditional EKG. Test subjects were able to operate the seat without any special instructions.
Users simply sit on the toilet for about 30 seconds while a smartphone app records and analyzes the EKG data for signs of cardiac arrhythmia.
While the full study results have yet to undergo independent peer review, the technology could ultimately help detect AFib earlier, when treatment is most effective.
“If we intervene sooner in patients with AFib, their outcomes improve significantly,” Dr. Paari Dominic, a cardiac electrophysiologist and associate professor of internal and cardiovascular medicine, told the American Medical Association News Wire, noting “recent studies have shown that pursuing a strategy to maintain a normal rhythm in patients with AFib within a year of detection produces better outcomes.”
Dominic added that there is a subgroup of patients who already have “significant structural or electrical changes in their hearts” that put them at high risk of developing AFib and could therefore benefit from closer monitoring.
More than 5 million adults in the US are living with AFib, and the number of cases increases with age. Women are also more likely to develop the condition because they generally live longer than men.
If AFib goes undetected, a stroke might be the first symptom of the condition. The condition is responsible for about 1 in 7 strokes — and they’re often severe because the clots originate in the heart, which make them larger than clots that form in the neck or brain.
High blood pressure, which becomes more common with age, accounts for about 1 in 5 AFib cases. People of European ancestry are also at higher risk of developing AFib, though Black people with the condition are more likely to experience serious complications, according to the American Heart Association.
Other risk factors include chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, sleep apnea and hyperthyroidism, as well as lifestyle habits like smoking and moderate to heavy drinking.
In fact, one-third of new diagnoses are related to alcohol use.
The connection is so well established that doctors have a name for irregular heart conditions triggered by binge drinking at Christmastime: “holiday heart syndrome.”
“Around the holidays, opportunities for celebration — often accompanied by heavy drinking — occur during a brief period of time,” Saugat Khanal, a post-doctoral scholar at The Ohio State University, told The Post.
“Unfortunately, this sometimes sends revelers, even those with no previous heart condition, to the hospital with a racing or abnormally beating heart.”
