A new, non-invasive eye examination, combined with other information could predict the risk of heart attack, according to the study.

Researchers found that linking information such as patterns pertaining to blood vessels in the retina and traditional clinical factors has enabled them to better identify people at risk of a heart attack.

This method has proved more useful than the traditional established model which focuses on demographic data. Researchers presented their processes and findings, on Monday, to the European Society of Human Genetics during the annual conference in Vienna.

According to the experts, they used data from the UK Biobank, containing the medical and lifestyle information of 500,000 people, and calculated the fractal dimension (a measurement name).

In their model, the combined information was categorized by factors such as sex, age, systolic blood pressure, body mass index, and smoking status, and studied people on the database who had experienced a heart attack, or myocardial infarction, once their retinal images had been collected.

Their findings showed that there was a shared genetic basis between fractal dimension and myocardial infraction. This allowed researchers to pinpoint their best predictive performance five years prior to the average age, of 60, for a heart attack.

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That being said, researchers argued that every condition may have a unique retinal variation profile. And furthermore, their findings could play a leading role in identifying propensity to other diseases.

Prof Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “More research is needed to show that this improvement in prediction is robust. Work will also be required to understand the feasibility of this approach and determine how best to incorporate these scans into routine clinical practice.”

The future of medicine could be changed through such studies and patterns.