Lucozade shakes up medical world

Patient downs fizzy drink for heart diagnostic test

- BY DARRAGH McDONAGH

LUCOZADE has been heralded as a low-cost diagnostic tool after cardiac specialists used the beverage while treating a woman who was suffering from chest pain and palpitations.

The 25-year-old underwent an ultrasound scan, which detected a growth just behind her heart which medics feared could have been an aortic aneurysm or a tumour.

Specialists at Eagle Lodge Cardiology Clinic in Limerick turned to a bottle of Lucozade rather than going through the cost, delay and anxiety of sending her for detailed cross-sectional imagining.

She drank 200ml of the fizzy soft drink before doctors repeated the ultrasound scan and this time “swirling bubbles” consistent with gas movement were visible within the growth.