EndoPat

A medical device that tests to see if endothelial cells are damaged. Endothelial cells line the inner walls of blood vessels, lymph vessels, and the heart, and damage to them may be an early sign of heart disease. EndoPAT is based on the noninvasive Peripheral Arterial Tone (PAT) signal, which measures the finger arterial pulsatile volume changes. EndoPAT system comprises a measurement apparatus that supports a pair of modified plethysmographic bio-sensors, and consists of digital recording equipment and two finger probes. During the test, probes are placed on each index finger and hooked up to a small machine to measure blood flow. A standard blood pressure cuff is placed on one arm, and the arm without the cuff is used as the control. A reading of the fingers’ blood flow rate begins, and then the blood pressure cuff on one arm is inflated for a few minutes and then deflated, allowing for three timed readings. The role of the inflated blood pressure cuff is to occlude and then abruptly release blood flow to assess reactive hyperemia (RH) (which occurs due to the shear stress that is created), the blood flow response that occurs when occlusion is released. Recently researchers at Mayo Clinic and Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston used this device to test 270 patients between the ages of 42 and 66 and followed their progress from August 1999 to August 2007. What they found was that 49% of patients whose EndoPAT test indicated poor endothelial function had a cardiac event during the seven-year study. which was more than the usual Framingham risk score could have predicted; It seams that EndoPAT might be very useful for risk assessment of the patients. Also called Endo-Pat 2000.