'Poker Face' may be a Sign of Lung, Heart Problems

If you just can't seem shake your "poker face," a new study shows that this could be the result of a serious heart and/or lung problem. A recent study published in the Emergency Medicine Journal found that the inability to more clearly express certain emotional facial characteristics could be an indicator of a more critical health problem.

For the study, researchers examined 50 adults with shortness of breath (dysponea) and chest pain. All of the participants were being cared for via an emergency department and asked to look at a laptop and view three different visual cues that were designed to trigger an emotional response.

A laptop webcam recorded their facial expressions in response to each of the three cues, consisting of a humorous cartoon, a photograph of an individual in tears and a close up of an individual's surprised face.

All participants were monitored for 14 days. During this time, they were evaluated for serious heart or lung problems, including acute coronary syndrome (heart attack, unstable angina), blood clots in the lung (pulmonary embolism), pneumonia, problems in the major (aortic) artery or gut and new cancers.

After analyzing the webcam recordings, findings showed that chest pain and shortness of breath increased the risk of heart or lung issues that might also change facial expression in response to visual cues. 

Furthermore, the greatest difference between the two groups was the ability to show 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," researchers wrote, in a news release. 

"The ultimate goal of this work is to provide clinicians with a new physical finding that can be associated with a healthy state to avoid unnecessary [computed tomography] scanning," that could be used as a supplementary measure during physical examination, they concluded.