Kolloquium des Instituts für Medizinische Informatik: Screening High School Students in Italy for Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) Prevention: A Telecardiology Project

Referent: Claudio De Lazzari, National research Council CNR-IFC

Ort: Hörsaal 6, Ebene E, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen

In Italy about 1000 young people per year fall victims of SCD. Pathologies responsible for SCD should be diagnosed as early as possible in order to perform effective prevention and to decrease both morbidity and mortality.

In 2010 a project started in Italy with the aim of performing early diagnosis of young students at risk of SCD.

A study was conducted on 13,016 students, aged between 16 and 19 years, in different Italian regions. It consisted essentially in the recording of ECG and compilation of questionnaires concerning risk factors. Alterations in ECG signal that have been considered includes: superventricular ectopic beats, ventricular ectopic beats, atrioventricular block, and others. The ECG tracks were sent in real time to a teleconsulting Center in which cardiologist analyzed the track and drew up the report.

If the teleconsulting Center observed some alterations, an interactive second level analysis was performed by a group of 10 cardiologists. If pathological or borderline conditions were esteemed, a third level analysis was performed.

A first analysis of the collected data allowed us to see that 24% of the students have at last one of the fourteen ECG pathological alterations considered in our study, 32% have ECG values within of the normal range and 44% have ECG signal into the borderline range.

The solution focused for this pilot study maximizes data collection and minimizes the costs for collecting such data. Therefore such kind of solutions can be profitably employed for prevention and cost reducing required to achieve mass screening.