Heart Attack Test May Cut Emergency Room Diagnosis Time

From BusinessWeek:

Doctors may be able to reduce the time it takes to diagnose a heart attack to one hour from as many as six with a new test approach that could save time, money and crowding in hospital emergency rooms, researchers said.

Using more-sensitive screening technology to detect changes in cardiac troponin, a substance in the blood tested for evidence of heart attack, and then inputting the data into an algorithm, doctors were able to rule in or rule out heart attack in 77 percent of patients within an hour of arriving at the hospital with chest pain, according to research published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

About these ads