EchoNext Flags 10% Heart Function in 45-Year-Old After Asthma Misdiagnosis
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 22
EchoNext Flags 10% Heart Function in 45-Year-Old After Asthma Misdiagnosis
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 22
Summary
One week after Queens ER doctors sent Louie Quiros home with asthma medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian’s EchoNext program flagged his ECG for possible severe heart damage and called him back.
An echocardiogram then found his heart was pumping out just 10% of its blood with each contraction, while a leaking mitral valve was sending blood back into the heart.
The 45-year-old caregiver and security guard had arrived in February 2025 coughing up blood and struggling to breathe; a chest X-ray was normal and the ECG looked abnormal but not diagnostic to clinicians.
EchoNext is being tested in a clinical trial at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia, where researchers run nearly 500,000 ECGs a year through the system to detect damage patterns humans may miss.
When a life-saving AI makes a fatal mistake, who is held accountable: the doctor, the hospital, or its developer?
If an AI detects a disease a doctor misses, can the doctor's intuition ethically overrule the algorithm?
Will medical AI create a new divide between rich hospitals that can afford it and poor ones that cannot?
EchoNext AI in Cardiac Care: Reducing Misdiagnosis and Improving Early Detection of Structural Heart Disease
Overview
Structural heart disease affects millions worldwide and often goes undetected due to the lack of routine, affordable screening. EchoNext, an innovative AI tool, addresses this gap by analyzing data from routine electrocardiograms to identify individuals at risk. In practice, EchoNext flagged potential severe heart damage in a patient, leading to a follow-up echocardiogram that revealed a critical heart condition. This demonstrates how EchoNext can enable early detection and intervention, helping to prevent significant health loss by catching serious heart issues before they progress.