The Food and Drug Administration has authorized an artificial intelligence model that reads a standard 12-lead EKG and flags signs of the most urgent heart attacks, including patterns that conventional EKG criteria can miss.
The decision targets a known gap in emergency heart care. Doctors have long identified the most dangerous heart attacks, in which a coronary artery is completely blocked, by looking for a pattern on the EKG called ST-segment elevation. Patients with that pattern are sent quickly to a cardiac catheterization lab, where the blockage can be opened. But some people with a blocked artery do not show the textbook pattern, and their treatment can be delayed.
