A study by the Israeli company Sanolla in collaboration with 'Clalit Health Services' and 'Edwards Lifesciences', reveals that the company's smart stethoscope (Smartscope) presented a sensitivity of 89% compared to only 46% in the diagnostic sensitivity of the acoustic stethoscope. Sanolla's CEO, Dr. Doron Adler: "A real revolution in diagnosis even for experienced family doctors."
The study, which has just ended, and lasted about a year and a half, surveyed 984 random patients aged 65 and over, in various clinics in Clalit Health Services' Haifa and Western Galilee district, all without exception had no cardiac medical history. Among the patients surveyed, the smartscope identified 43 patients with a cardiac problem. These were sent for an echocardiogram, which found that indeed 41 of them suffer from some cardiac problem.
The smart stethoscope developed by Sanolla, includes listening, recording and processing body sounds that are outside the range of human hearing and uses an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to identify cases of valvular stenosis and other cardiac problems, as well as lung diseases.
Clalit Health Services' director of the Department of Family Medicine of the Haifa and Western Galilee District, Dr. Mordechai Alpern, who took part as a senior researcher in the study, said that he is convinced of the ability to hear with the smartscope in everything related to diagnosis. "When in doubt with the regular stethoscope, I use a smart one." Dr. Alpern, who also serves as a specialist in the Galilee Medical Center Hospital's emergency room, emphasized that "the correct and early diagnosis is essential. If heart diseases are not diagnosed in time, due to hearing loss, it can be critical and sometimes even fatal."
"We have shown that the smartscope enables better hearing than a regular stethoscope, and not only that, but it has a high diagnostic accuracy. In a world where there is good medicine that guides these tests to be performed and doctors who insist on performing in-depth follow-up with their patients, the device is no less than a lifesaver," added Dr. Alpern.
Sanolla's founder and CEO, Dr. Doron Adler: "The incidence of heart disease increases sharply after the age of 65, and early diagnosis is of great importance in order to begin treatment before the appearance of co-morbidity, and to enable surgical intervention if necessary. The study proves that this is a real revolution in diagnosis even for experienced family doctors, who sometimes have difficulty identifying cardiac disorders with a standard stethoscope, both because of the required cardiology skill and because some of the disorders are not within the range of human hearing."