Dive Brief:
- A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology provides new evidence that a high-sensitivity test may help identify chest pain patients in the ED who do not need to be admitted.
- The authors studied if the test, high-sensitivity troponin T (hs-cTnT), predicted the likelihood of patients having an MI. The study tested 14,636 patients at a Swedish hospital.
- The researchers found that only 0.44% of those who had an hs-cTnT below 5 ng/l had an MI within 30 days. The authors calculated a negative predictive value of 99.8%.
Dive Insight:
Being able to predict which patients are in danger of having an MI and which aren't seems like a revolutionary step forward in ED medicine that could have huge protocol implications. Let's hope that this test turns out to be as promising as it appears here in other settings. If so, it seems clear that American hospitals should adopt it quickly.