Science
Heart attack blood test allows healthy patients to go home earlier
An early rule-out pathway for heart attack reduces length of stay and hospital admissions without increasing adverse cardiac events, according to results from a BHF-funded clinical trial presented today at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Paris.
There are around 188,000 heart attacks in the UK each year. But chest pain, which can have a number of different causes, is thought to be responsible for around a million visits to UK A&E departments each year.
The blood test behind the new pathway is already used by hospitals to diagnose heart attacks and works by measuring the blood levels of a protein, called troponin, released from the heart during a heart attack.
The researchers previously found the threshold at which they could use this test to rule out a heart attack and safely send people with chest pain home.
Now, the HiSTORIC trial has examined the efficacy and safety of an expedited pathway for use in hospitals, where high-sensitivity cardiac troponin testing is used to rule out heart attack, compared to standard care.
The results showed that using this pathway, doctors were able to discharge people not suffering from a heart attack quickly and safely.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, our Associate Medical Director, said:
"Each year in the UK, over a million people go to hospital suffering from chest pain. The quicker we can work out whether this chest pain is caused by a heart attack, the quicker we can start treatment.
“This is the first randomised clinical trial to show that a blood test already used in some hospitals to diagnose heart attacks can also be used to safely and effectively rule them out. This is good news for patients, who we can reassure and send home earlier, and it’ll also save hospital resources. Clinical guidelines may well change as a result of this study.”