Research from the University of Michigan suggests that one day a phone app could be able to detect the development of hepatic encephalopathy in patients just by listening to them speak. The resulting paper, "HEAR-MHE Study: Automated Speech Analysis Identifies Minimal Hepatic Encephalopathy and May Predict Future Overt Hepatic Encephalopathy" was published in Hepatology . Hepatic encephalopathy, a brain dysfunction caused by the liver's failure to filter toxins out of blood, often affects quality of life in patients with cirrhosis.
Minimal hepatic encephalopathy, a more subtle form of the condition, can portend overt hepatic encephalopathy, which can lead to complications such as comas. Minimal hepatic encephalopathy can lead to confusion, sleep disturbance and personality changes, among other symptoms. Despite its effects on quality of life, however, the minimal version can be hard to detect.
Ten to 20% of patients with cirrhosis could have minimal hepatic encephalopathy, but as a doctor you won't know it, because you would need to administer a psychometric hepatic encephalopathy-score test to diagnose them. But that never happens in clinical practice, so these people go undiagnosed." Patricia Bloom, M.
D., assistant professor of hepatology at U-M and lead author of the study A new idea Hepatic encephalopathy often also affects speech. Hoping to create an easier test, researchers recorded 200 patients with cirrhosis performing speech tasks.
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