Retinal Scans and What They Can Reveal About Your Health

The retina is a thin layer of nerves lining the back of your eyes that sends signals to your brain, enabling you to see. We doctors have always referred to it as the window to the brain. Now, thanks to a remarkable new advance, there is reason to consider the retina as a window to the heart as well – and someday it might give your doctor information that could save your life.

Google Artificial Intelligence and its subsidiary, Verily Life Sciences, have assembled a database of retinal scans from nearly 300,000 patients and used it to develop an algorithm to predict the risk of developing heart disease over five years. These results are dramatically positive and the beginning of a new and effective approach to prevention.

The scan analyzes telltale signs of aging, smoking and high blood pressure found in the tiny vessels and structures of the retina. In a study just published in “Nature Biomedical Engineering,” the algorithm was applied to almost 12,000 scans (with over 100 patients with known heart disease used as a baseline). It proved to be 70 percent accurate at predicting an acute heart problem, including heart attack and stroke.

Seventy percent is the magic number, because the European Society of Cardiology recently developed a Systemic Coronary Risk Evaluation Scale (SCORE) that has been shown to be about 70 percent accurate at predicting heart attack, stroke and related death in over 250,000 patients. The retina scan is just as accurate as SCORE, and will only get better with fine tuning. After a few years it will likely become a very useful tool in the doctor’s office.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/02/24/dr-marc-siegel-new-medical-advance-may-provide-doctors-with-life-saving-information-about-your-health.html