A heart attack can be a complex and difficult thing to diagnose as well as control and treat. However one of the effective methods of detecting a heart attack and also identifying any false alarms may be the Heart Attack Saliva or Spit Test.
Simply put the spit or saliva test will help to quickly identify if a person is having or is going to have a heart attack. The test involves giving up a saliva sample for analysis using a tube, an ATM card like object that uses a Nano-bio-chip and an analyzer machine.
The patients’ saliva sample is fed into the analyzer which checks various biomarkers that can be detected in the saliva to find out if a person is having a heart attack right now or at a point in the near future.
Certain proteins present in the saliva are able to predict or indentify heart attack and the potential for using the test in emergency and rescue services becomes apparent.
This could be used in community places such as drug stores and so on, on board airplanes, is medical response services such as ambulances and so on.
The chief point of differentiation between a standard blood test for detecting a heart attack and the heart attack spit test is the fact that the standard modes of testing are more time consuming. Whereas drawing blood of a heart attack patient and then testing its enzyme levels can take more than an hour and a half, this test can have its results ready in as little as 15 minutes.
In the usual course, paramedics use electro cardiograms fitted on board ambulances and so on to try and detect heart attacks. This is however not foolproof.
Now some paramedic teams in the United States have added the spit test to their emergency response arsenal with the help of what they are calling the Lab-on-a-chip test kit that uses a simple swab from the inside of the cheek.
Medicos are of the view that this is ground breaking technology which could well end up saving lives due to the fact that they could save a valuable 45 minutes or so and help to start treatment as early as possible.