People with serious heart and lung conditions have a reduced range of facial expressions, new research suggests.

This could be used in busy Emergency Department (ED) settings to quickly determine who needs to be prioritised for treatment, US researchers have said.

They studied the diagnostic accuracy of reduced facial expression among 50 adults who had come to an ED reporting dyspnoea (shortness of breath) or chest pain.

The patients were asked to quickly look at three visual cues on a laptop - a funny cartoon, a picture of someone crying and a close-up of a surprised face.

Each cue was designed to elicit an emotional response and these responses were recorded by a webcam and then analysed.

The patients were checked for serious heart and lung conditions, such as heart attack, unstable angina and pneumonia, and were monitored for two weeks.

The researchers found that those who had a potentially serious heart or lung condition had a much narrower range of facial expressions when responding to the cues compared to people who did not have such conditions.

The biggest difference was in the ability to register surprise.

"We believe that due to the gravity of their illness, these patients may not have been able to process and respond to an emotional stimulus in the way that would be expected of most people under normal conditions," the researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine said.

They noted that the goal of their research is to provide doctors with ‘a new physical finding that can be associated with a healthy state to avoid unnecessary (CT) scanning'. This could simply be added to the initial physical examination to help determine who needs to be prioritised and who needs potentially costly and invasive tests.

Details of these findings are published in the Emergency Medicine Journal.

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