'Instant' blood test for heart attacks

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41399159

'Instant' blood test for heart attacks

8 hours ago

From the section Health

A blood test that could rule out a heart attack in under 20 minutes should be used routinely, say UK researchers. A team from King's College London have tested it on patients and say the cMyC test could be rolled out on the NHS within five years. They claim it would save the health service millions of pounds each year by freeing up beds and sending well patients home. About two-thirds of patients with chest pain will not have had a heart attack.

A heart trace, called an ECG, can quickly show up major heart attacks, but it is not very good at excluding more common, smaller ones that can still be life-threatening. Currently, patients with suspect chest pain and a clear ECG can have a different heart-attack blood test, called troponin, when they arrive at A&E. But it needs to be repeated three hours later to pick up signs of heart muscle damage.
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Levels of cMyC (cardiac myosin-binding protein C) in the blood rise more rapidly and to a higher extent after a heart attack than troponin proteins, studies suggest. That means doctors can use the new test to rule out a heart attack in a higher proportion of patients straightaway, according to the researchers who report their trial findings in the journal Circulation.

They carried out troponin and cMyC blood tests on nearly 2,000 people admitted to hospitals in Switzerland, Italy and Spain with acute chest pain. The new test was better at giving patients the all-clear within the first three hours of presenting with chest pain.
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