Hong Kong, April 9 : The University of Hong Kong (HKU) on Thursday announced the release of a new mobile app and screening programme to help prevent heart stroke in atrial fibrillation (AF) patients.
According to the research findings by HKU and Taiwan’s Yang-Ming University, patients with AF have a five-fold higher risk of stroke than ordinary people. In Hong Kong, 12,000 cases of stroke are registered each year, among which, 25 percent are related to AF.
To enforce the management of stroke prevention in patients with AF, the Department of Medicine of HKU initiated two new measures recently, namely, the AF management app and private doctors AF screening programme, Xinhua news agency reported.
The free new mobile app was designed to help doctors manage their patients with AF. By using the five clinical calculators, namely, stroke risk calculator, major bleeding risk calculator, quality of anticoagulation calculator, likelihood to good quality of anticoagulation calculator, and kidney function calculator, doctors can assess the ischemic stroke risk and major bleeding risk of patients with AF.
Chan Pak-hei, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, HKU, said the app is user-friendly. Taking the stroke risk calculator as example, doctors only need to enter details of risk factors, such as age, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiac failure etc., and the app can automatically calculate the risk of stroke each year.
