|
HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
What Are The New Tests for Heart Attack? There are about 15 million people, who will show up in emergency rooms in the United States and Europe every year having symptoms of a myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction (more commonly known as heart attack). During heart attack, there is an interruption of blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die. If not treated within specific period of time, it can cause damage or death of heart muscle tissue. Troponin test can be used to test several different heart disorders for heart disease patients, including myocardial infarction. The older tests will take hours before telltale levels of the cardiac troponin appear in the blood, and this would surely delay diagnosis and treatment. Faster test, if one can be devised, can save not only time but also billions of dollars. More importantly, it can save many lives, as it could help doctors quickly determine whether patients are having heart attack and treat their patients swiftly. On August 26, 2009, 2 studies reported that there are now 4 new ultra-sensitive blood tests that can rapidly detect when the heart muscle is dying from a heart attack; even from the moment the patient arrives in the emergency room. The 4 new tests were Abbott-Architect Troponin I, Roche High-Sensitive Troponin T, Roche Troponin I, and Siemens Troponin I Ultra. All these new tests, according to the 2 studies, work more quickly and more accurately.
These 2 new studies, both conducted in Europe, were designed to examine whether the new generation of troponin-detectors was sensitive enough to be used sooner. In one of the studies that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers from University Hospital Basel in Switzerland argued that the cost saving associated with such increase in early diagnostic accuracy might be substantial. So far, the best measures of a heart attack are electrocardiograms and a cardiac troponin test. The former measures the electrical activity of the heart while the later looks for the release of a protein unique to the heart. Nevertheless, it could take several hours for troponin to get into the blood at levels high enough to be measured. By looking at 718 patients, the researches found that all 4 ultrasensitive troponin-detection tests were better than an older Roche test at picking out the 123 people who had actually suffered a heart attack. Comparing with the standard (old) Roche test that had 90 percent accuracy, all the 4 new tests could correctly spot a heart attack upon admission in at least 94 percent of the cases.In conclusion, the researchers pointed out that these new tests could substantially improve the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction, in particular for those patients complaining a recent onset of chest pain. The companies making the new tests sponsored for the study. The second study, conducted by researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz at 3 German medical centers, studied the Siemens test without the involvement of Siemens. Comparable results were also found. However, the researchers of this study cautioned that further studies are required to examine whether rapid diagnosis actually translates into a better result for heart attack patients.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright
2007-2012 © HowToPreventHeartDisease.com . All Rights Reserved.d....... |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
