Arterial Stiffness
A direct measure of arterial stiffness, aortic pulse wave velocity has been shown to predict adverse cardiovascular events. One adult in 3 will die of a cardiovascular event.
Cardiotrace now offers responsible employers a cost effective non invasive way to indicate arterial stiffness and create awareness of possible cardiovascular events. Regular testing is recommended. This also makes economic sense.
Heart Disease
Heart disease is common both in the population at large but also in the population of working age. It is estimated that heart disease, including stroke and high blood pressure, is responsible for more costs than any other disease or injury. The cost in occupational terms of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is, however, harder to quantify but is likely to be similarly high. Heart disease can claim the ultimate cost as the most common cause of death.
A recent study of self reported work related illness shows that record numbers of workers feel that they have an illness that was caused by or made worse by their work, equating to 2.3
million people and 33 million working days lost. These figures show a prevalence estimate for CVD caused or made worse by work of 80 000 during the study year, with each person reporting work related illness taking an average of 23 days off through sickness in the year. This equates to 1.84 million days lost to work related CVD, with associated costs to industry of approximately £120 million. In essence, the issue of heart disease and work is a very significant one in terms of individuals affected, industry, health service resource, and national resource. (source: Heartonline)
Cardiotrace is not diagnosing any medical condition, it is simply comparing readings from samples of healthy individuals of the same sex, age and other parameters and allowing the subject to make their own judgements.
A Brief History of the CardioTrace
Over recent years, the correlation between stiffening of the large arteries in the body and Cardiovascular events, such as stroke and heart attack has reached a crescendo with research groups across the globe seeking to discover cost effective methods of identifying the onset of this disease. CardioTrace has emerged as one of the most exciting developments in this field, initiated and researched some 20 years ago in prominent London Teaching hospitals and key research centres around the world.
Indeed, current published research indicates that CardioTrace has the ability to highlight early stages of atherosclerosis, the build up of fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances found in the blood manifesting as a plaque on the inner walls of the arteries. This, we are all aware, can lead to complications in the fullness of time left untreated, but with early screening of the circumstances and conditions that can cause it, that day can be significantly postponed or even eliminated during normal life span.
CardioTrace evolved as a result of a very close collaboration between a major British medical instrument company, and a professor with his team of researchers which developed a device capable of measuring the pulse waveform within the human body. With extremely complicated mathematical interpretation as a result of academic research, and analysis of the pressure and volume waveforms that the pulse generates throughout the body, it was possible to make comparisons against people considered "of normal healthy condition" in terms of all the current accepted risk markers identified today by organisations such as the European Society of Cardiology and the Framingham Risk Score from the U.S. A database of these "fit and healthy" males and females between the ages of 18 and 75, of all ethnic backgrounds was created and by 2004, a company called Micro Medical and forged its path into this innovative new area of being able to non-invasively screen for these early signs of atherosclerosis with its CardioTrack. The price tag however was fairly high, and at nearly £3,000 it was still out of the reach of mass screening facilities, finding its valuable place however in many research study programmes and teaching hospitals across the globe, but its value to mankind unrealised at this point.
With this fact uppermost in the mind of Young at Heart International, a major project was embarked upon to create a PC based programme with USB functionality, and a much more accessible price tag that could license this all important algorithm from a major US based Health Care corporation. This would complete the mission of being able to deliver Cardiovascular Screening for large artery stiffness to the masses, and in that way help to enable prevention rather than the huge national burden of after care costs resulting from the growth of CVD across the globe to nearly 1 billion of the 6.5 billion inhabitants, a truly frightening statistic!
With many published and peer reviewed papers adopting the use of this technology, why not take a closer look at the value this could provide to yourself and mankind all importantly. With careful interpretation of the waveforms, it was also possible to compute someone's currently identified "Biological Age" when compared to their "Actual" age to provide a hint on vascular condition, and when using the impressive visual "trending" capability of CardioTrace, the ability to track positive and negative improvement is a key factor in its appeal to many health care segments in the world today
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