From the Portland Press Herald: Heart attacks are the second-leading cause of firefighter line-of-duty deaths. The Freeport (Maine) Fire Department is hoping to avoid such deaths with a piece of test equipment that can help detect the small heartbeat irregularities that indicate a heightened risk for heart trouble.

The diagnostic heart test is called Microvolt T-Wave Alternans. It serves as a marker of cardiac instability and an elevated risk of sudden cardiac death. It was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been available for seven years. This year, Cambridge Heart Inc. of Tewksbury, Mass., won approval to market a module that will make the technology more widely available to doctors.

Darrel Fournier, Freeport’s chief and president of the New England Fire Chiefs Association, hopes the pilot program eventually can be expanded statewide. That would make Maine the first state to use the technology to screen firefighters for risk factors associated with sudden cardiac arrest. Read the entire article.