Digital Hearts Save Patients from Dangerous Beats

0:00It's April 4th. Welcome in. This is Global News Today, where global headlines meet AI. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University build digital twins of patients' hearts to fight a dangerous fast heartbeat called ventricular tachycardia. These virtual replicas are so spot on that testing treatments on them guided real life fixes for 10 patients. The Food and Drug Administration greenlit this approach just where this small group. The tech pulls data from advanced MRI scans to map how electricity zips through the heart's lower chambers. Its spots where ways get trapped in loops, like a hurricane swirl, causing the heart to quiver instead of pump. Doctors simulate burning out those bad spots on the twin first, picking the perfect targets before touching the real heart. Heart experts not in the study are calling it a breakthrough. They dreamed of years ago. Traditional ablation is hit or miss, with patients under anesthesia for hours and often needing repeats, plus backup defibrillators. But this precision cut procedure shorter and safer, burning less healthy tissue.

1:03Over a year later, eight patients had zero irregular beats, and the other two had just one short blip during recovery. That's way better than the usual 60% success rate, and most ditch their meds too. Teams now plan bigger trials with other hospitals, including one for the more common atrial fibrillation. Doctors elsewhere, eye digital twins for cancer, pushing personalized medicine to new levels.