Speaking from the heart! Doctors say they can determine your risk of heart disease by listening to your VOICE.
- Doctors have trained an algorithm to evaluate 80 aspects of the human voice, such as pitch.
- AI detects possible signs of cardiovascular disease invisible to the human ear
- Patients considered “high risk” by the AI were 2.6 times more likely to have heart problems.
The study suggests that doctors can determine the risk of heart attack in patients with cardiovascular disease by listening to how they talk.
A computer algorithm was able to detect heart patients most at risk of serious complications by looking for clues in voice recordings.
Tiny changes in the frequency, tone, or pitch of someone’s speech that are not picked up by the human ear could provide clues to heart health, researchers say.
While the exact reason that heart health affects the voice is not clear, doctors believe it has to do with how the nervous system regulates unconscious bodily functions such as the voice box, blood pressure, and heart rate.
The researchers found that those who scored “high” in the AI voice assessment were more than two and a half times more likely to suffer complications from cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack.
It is hoped that this method could someday be another tool to identify people at risk for cardiovascular disease, one of Britain’s biggest killers.
American researchers have trained an algorithm to detect tiny changes in the human voice, which can be an indicator of cardiovascular disease.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US tested an algorithm trained to analyze more than 80 aspects of the human voice, such as amplitude, pitch, and cadence.
They asked 108 patients, with a mean age of 60, who were referred for X-rays for coronary heart disease, to record three 30-second snippets of their own voice on a smartphone.
Coronary artery disease (CHD) clogs the blood vessels and can lead to angina, strokes, or heart attacks.
Coronary artery disease occurs when the main blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to the heart are damaged.
IHD affects over 1.6 million men and one million women in the UK and a total of 15 million adults in the US.
This is usually due to plaque and inflammation.
When plaque builds up, it narrows the arteries, which reduces blood flow to the heart.
Over time, this can cause angina pectoris, and a complete blockage can lead to a heart attack.
Many people don’t have any symptoms at first, but as the plaque builds up, they may notice chest pain or shortness of breath during exercise or stress.
Other causes of CAD include smoking, diabetes, and a sedentary lifestyle.
It can be prevented by quitting smoking, controlling conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, staying active, eating right, and managing stress.
Medications can help lower cholesterol levels, and aspirin thins the blood, reducing the risk of blood clots.
In severe cases, stents may be placed in the arteries to open them, and in coronary artery bypass surgery, a graft is created to bypass blocked arteries using a vessel from another part of the body.
Source: Mayo Clinic.
The first example was scripted reading, while the other two exercises asked participants to speak freely about positive and negative experiences.
Each person was then rated by the algorithm as having a “high risk” or “low risk” of cardiovascular disease.
The researchers, who will formally present their findings at the 71st annual scientific session of the American College of Cardiology in Washington DC next month, then followed the participants for two years.
The researchers found that 58.3% of people with high scores went to the hospital with chest pain or a heart attack during this period, compared with 30.6% of people with low scores.
This meant that people with high scores were 2.6 times more likely to suffer from what doctors thought were serious problems related to coronary heart disease compared to people with low scores.
People with high scores were also three times more likely to show signs of fat accumulation in their arteries on medical tests.
Coronary artery disease is when the main blood vessels that feed the heart narrow due to a buildup of fatty deposits.
This can lead to heart attacks when these deposits rupture and lead to the formation of a blood clot that blocks the blood supply to the organ.
A high-fat diet, smoking, and conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes can increase your risk of coronary heart disease.
Study lead author Dr. Jaskanwal Sarah, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, said further development of voice analysis could provide a non-invasive and cost-effective way to identify patients at risk for coronary heart disease.
“We do not expect voice analysis technology to replace physicians or existing healthcare delivery methods,” he said.
“But we think there is a huge opportunity for voice technology as an adjunct to existing strategies.
“Providing a voice sample is very intuitive and even enjoyable for patients, and it could be a scalable tool for us to improve patient management.”
Dr. Sara says much more research needs to be done on the use of voice analysis to assess heart health before it can be used in a clinical setting.
In particular, he said that further research is needed to determine whether the results can be reproduced in different languages and with different accents.
This is not the first time that patients’ voice samples have been used to assess heart health, however, unlike the latest study, the study was conducted retrospectively after patients suffered from problems such as heart failure.
Similar studies have also attempted to use subtle changes in malformations to detect conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and even Covid infection.
Coronary artery disease affects over 1.6 million men and one million women in the UK and a total of 15 million adults in the US. It kills 64,000 Brits and 360,900 Americans a year.