Emergency departments send people home after unexplained fainting every day, usually with normal test results and no answer. A randomized trial presented Monday in Munich found that handing those patients a wearable chest patch before they leave more than doubles the share whose hidden heart rhythm problems are eventually found.
The ASPIRED trial ran at 45 UK hospitals and analyzed 2,233 adults, mean age 58.3, with syncope that remained unexplained after emergency department assessment. Half were randomly assigned a 14 day adhesive chest monitor, the rest received their hospital's standard management. Over the following year, clinically significant arrhythmias were identified in 22 percent of the monitored group compared with 9 percent under standard care. Diagnoses also came far sooner, at a median of 22 days versus 55. Results were presented in a Hot Line session at the European Society of Cardiology Congress and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.
