38 THE QUEENS COURIER • HEALTH • DECEMBER 5, 2019 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
health
New blood test for heart attacks
helps to shorten ER wait times
Waiting in an emergency room frustrates
patients across the country. Billboards are
even popping up on local highways advertising
the wait time and a promise for faster
care. Chest pain is estimated to cause
more than eight million visits annually
to overcrowded emergency departments,
but a small fraction of patients actually are
experiencing heart attacks.
Th is presents a challenge for physicians
who need to determine the next steps for
a patient’s care quickly. Th ey don’t want to
keep a patient waiting unnecessarily, as it
limits the resources available to treat other
waiting patients. And they don’t want to
risk overlooking a critical diagnosis by discharging
a patient too soon. A new blood
test is helping physicians address this issue
and diagnose patients suff ering from heart
attacks as quickly as possible.
When a patient experiencing chest pain
enters the ER, a physician typically orders
a blood test to determine whether the biomarker
protein troponin is present. As
blood fl ow to the heart is blocked, the
heart muscle begins to die in as few as 30
to 60 minutes and releases this troponin
into the bloodstream. Th e earlier troponin
elevations are confi rmed, the earlier a physician
can initiate care for a patient, potentially
minimizing damage to a patient’s
heart.
If troponin is not elevated in the fi rst
blood draw, sequential blood draws are
typically taken to measure troponin levels
over the course of a few hours to see if
there is an increase. It is during this monitoring
period that ERs can become fi lled
with patients. Th e Siemens Healthineers
High-Sensitivity Troponin I test detects
smaller changes in a patient’s troponin
level as repeat testing occurs, off ering physicians
greater confi dence in the results to
enable them to triage patients more quickly.
Confi dence in a patient’s test result can
determine what steps come next for the
patient, steps that could be invasive and
costly, explained Jim Freeman of Siemens
Healthineers. Physicians need to be able
to trust the results before leading a patient
down an intensive care pathway, but it’s
increasingly challenging with lifestyle and
dietary factors that can aff ect test results if
not disclosed by the patient.
“A vitamin supplement that is rising in
popularity, called biotin, is known to interfere
with some testing biomarkers such as
troponin,” Freeman said. “In an emergency
situation a patient may not be able to share
that they’ve been taking a supplement,
so when developing the High Sensitivity
Troponin I assay, we took this into account
and eliminated the impact of biotin as high
as 3500 ng/mL on test results.”
Th e benefi ts of the test for hospitals and
their patients are signifi cant, Freeman said.
“First, the ability to diagnose heart attacks
earlier can help to reduce heart death to
improve patient outcomes. Second, the
ability to exclude heart attacks earlier in
a crowded ER can allow for faster care for
patients with other emergencies. Th ird,
the increased precision of the Siemens
Healthineers High-Sensitivity Troponin I
assay enables providers to make more confi
dent decisions, whether admitting the
patient or sending the patient home with
an antacid.”
Th e cost of unnecessary admissions
and misdiagnosis of heart attacks reaches
billions of dollars each year, presenting
an opportunity for healthcare providers
to improve medical care related to heart
attack admissions.
“Our emergency department is overcrowded
with patients. If we can do a
more effi cient job at triaging patients to
receive the proper level of care and to discharge
the patients who do not need to
stay in the emergency department, this will
have a tremendous economic advantage
for our healthcare system,” said Dr. Alan
Wu of Zuckerberg San Francisco General
Hospital and Trauma Center.
Courtesy BPT
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