The Ticker & the Flicker

Two University of Illinois doctors reported last week that they had developed an instrument which, they hoped, would help to detect heart disease in its earliest stages. If their hope is fulfilled, countless cases of heart trouble may now be detected when they begin--in the arteries--and treated in time to slow down the disease.

Senior member of the research team which gave this encouraging news to the Chicago Society of Internal Medicine and the Chicago Heart Association was Physiologist Andrew C. Ivy, vice president of the University of Illinois. Under his general direction, an astonishingly simple machine called the "flicker photometer" was perfected by Dr. Louis Richard Krasno, an assistant professor at the university.

Early Detection. Said Dr. Krasno: "People apparently in good health die suddenly on the golf course, in the train, on the street or in the office." Many of the conditions leading to these sudden deaths could have been detected, Dr. Krasno believes, with a sensitive instrument like his.

The flicked photometer, developed from a standard device long used by eye doctors, is built around a six-volt bulb set in a revolving cylinder. In one side of the cylinder a window is cut to show a flashing light like a miniature lighthouse. The patient looks at the light through opalescent glass. If his retina and brain are getting a normal supply of blood and oxygen, the normal subject should see the flicker effect when the cylinder revolves as fast as 45 times a second. But if the eye's arteries are narrowed, the oxygen-starved retina loses sensitivity: the patient sees a steady light until the cylinder is slowed down-- sometimes to only 30 turns a second.

To check the result, a tablet of nitroglycerine is dissolved under the patient's tongue. The drug enlarges his constricted arteries and allows a potential victim of heart disease to make a better score on the flicker photometer test. When the drug wears off, the retina again loses sensitivity.

Vital Deduction. Drs. Ivy and Krasno reason that if the eye's arteries are narrowed, as shown by the flicker test, it is probable that other arteries, including those of the heart, are similarly affected.

Of the 300 people who first got the "flicker fusion test" at the University of Illinois, 24 were shown to have narrowing of the arteries. Such cases, the two doctors believe, might easily develop into coronary thrombosis (bloodclotting which closes the main arteries), angina pectoris, high blood pressure--or all three. If the weakness is spotted early, the patient can promptly begin leading a less strenuous life, and perhaps postpone more serious heart trouble for years.

The Ivy-Krasno gadget is so simple that it will be in production by March. But before testing for potential heart disease can become as routine as testing blood pressure, doctors will have to wait for confirmation of the underlying theory: that the eye is a window to the heart.

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