Scientists Develop Ways of Detecting Heart Attack

German researchers have ___B__1____ a new generation of defibrillators and early-warning software aimed at offering heart patients greater protection1 __D___2_____ sudden death from cardiac arrest.

In Germany alone around 100,000 people die annually as a result of cardiac arrest and many of these cases ___A__3____ by disruption to the heart’s rhythm. Those most at risk are patients who have __D__4____ suffered a heart attack, and for years the use of defibrillators has proved useful in diagnosing ____C___5______ disruptions to heart rhythms and correcting them automatically by intervening within seconds. These devices __C___6_____ a range of functions, such as that of pacemaker.

Heart specialists at Freiburg’s University Clinic have now achieved a breakthrough with an implanted defibrillator ___A__7_____ of generating a six-channel electrocardiogram (ECG) within the body. This integrated system allows early diagnosis of ___B__8_____ blood-flow problems and a pending heart attack. It will be implanted in patients for the first time this year. Meanwhile, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Mathematics in Kaiserslautern have developed new computer software that renders the evaluation of ECG data __D___9_____.

The overwhelming __C___10______ of patients at risk will not have an implanted defibrillator and must for this reason undergo regular ECGs. “Many of the current programs only __B___11____ into account a linear correlation of the data. We are, however, making use __A__12____ a non-linear process that reveals the chaotic patterns of heart beats as an open and complex system,”2 Hagen Knaf says, “__D__13____ changes in the heart beats over time can be monitored and individual variations in patients taken into account.”3 An old study of ECG data, based __C__14____ 600 patients who had suffered a subsequent heart attack, enabled the researchers to compare risks and to show __C___15____ the new software evaluates the data considerably better.

1. A) come up B) come up with C) come up to D) come up against

2. A) to B) for C) with D) from

3. A) are caused B) caused C) are to cause D) have been causing

4. A) easily B) readily C) frequently D) already

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C) life-threatening D) error-correcting

6. A) take in B) take after C) take on D) take from

7. A) capable B) able C) skillful D) skilled

8. A) chronic B) acute C) recurrent D) persistent