Scientists have proposed a new portable gadget that could help one detect strokes based on eye movement, says an American study.
A
bedside electronic device that measures eye movements can successfully
determine whether the cause of severe, continuous, disabling dizziness
is a stroke or something benign, according to results of a small study
led by Johns Hopkins researchers, reports Science Daily.
"Using
this device can directly predict who has had a stroke and who has not,"
says David Newman-Toker, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of
neurology and otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine and leader of the study, according to the journal Stroke.
"We're
spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on expensive stroke
work-ups that are unnecessary, and probably missing the chance to save
tens of thousands of lives because we aren't properly diagnosing their
dizziness or vertigo as stroke symptoms."
Newman-Toker says if
additional larger studies confirm these results, the device could one
day be the equivalent of an electrocardiogram (EKG), a simple
noninvasive test routinely used to rule out heart attack in patients
with chest pain. And, he adds, universal use of the device could
"virtually eliminate deaths from misdiagnosis and save a lot of time and
money."