NEW TOILET SEAT PREVENTS HEART FAILURE!

TAKING a seat on your bathroom throne may soon prevent deaths from congestive heart failure! University researchers have developed a high-tech toilet seat-based system that can track a person’s heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygenation levels.

It also measures the heart’s electrical and mechanical activity, as well as a patient’s weight and stroke volume, or the amount of blood pumped out of the heart at every beat.

By analyzing that data, the system can pick up deteriorating conditions before patients

that are being treated for suffered congestive heart failure even realize they’re having a problem.

The system would then pass along a report to cardiologists who’d decide if immediate intervention is needed.

With one million new cases of congestive heart failure diagnosed each year, the new product will make it easier to monitor patients after they leave the hospital and lead to cost savings, experts say.

Up to 25 percent of patients

with congestive heart failure are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, says Nicholas Conn, a postdoctoral fellow at Rochester Institute of Technology.

“After 90 days of hospital discharge, 45 percent of patients are readmitted. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is penalizing hospitals for readmitting patients for heart failure,” adds Conn, who’s also founder and CEO of Heart Health Intelligence, which is part of the university team that developed the toilet seats.

Conn and his team are working on approving the product with the FDA and rolling it out across the country.

Monitors patients’ pulse rate, oxygen & blood pressure