Crossbones in the earlobe warn of cardiovascular disease

If the eyes are the window of the soul, the ears are the window of the heart. Looking at a sign that appears in the earlobe will help us diagnose a cardiovascular disease.

In 1973, Dr. Sanders T. Frank and his team published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that a 45-degree backslash in the earlobe is a warning sign of coronary artery disease.

This disease is a condition in which the coronary arteries are blocked, causing the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart. And this mark is also called the Frank sign.

Attracted by the relationship between earlobes and cardiovascular disease, in 1984, a group of doctors in New York, USA continued to study and confirm the link between these two parts also in the Journal of New Medicine. England.

Accordingly, in the study with 43 men and 20 women, 90% of participants had stains in the earlobes and had ever had a heart attack.

This mark is also known as the Frank sign.

The physicist Richard F. Wagner of Boston Medical School suspects that long-term exposure to androgen , the king of testosterone's male and father hormones, causes blood clots in arteries due to excess production. of red blood cells.

Then, in 2006, scientists pursued the study of the sensitivity and specificity of the warning value of Frank signs in a group of 172 patients with suspected coronary artery disease.

Participants have different weights, including fat people and lean people, many ages and smoking habits. They are clinically tested, electrocardiographic rest, electrocardiogram and selective coronary angiography.

The diagnostic criteria for coronary artery disease are the presence of stenosis of 75% or more in one of the three main coronary bodies.

The results of statistical studies show that there is a very important relationship between Frank's sign and coronary artery disease (p <0.001). The sensitivity of Frank's signal reached 75%, its specificity reached 57.5% and its positive predictive value reached 80.3%.

According to a study published last year in the journal Angiology, people with obvious wrinkles in the earlobe increased by 10% the risk of artery blockage.

Ear folds may be a sign that poor blood circulation, including arteries in the heart, is not merely a sign of aging.

People with obvious wrinkles in the earlobe increase 10% of the risk of artery blockage.

In this study, scientists also considered other constituent risk factors such as age and smoking habits, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, diabetes, obesity .

Although the sign of Frank is not 100% accurate, it is still an early warning sign. This is very meaningful and useful in screening and diagnosing coronary artery disease, especially in young people under 60 years old.

So, if we find a stain in the earlobe or Frank's sign, we should actively go for screening for cardiovascular disease.