Chest pain patients presenting at the emergency department are set to benefit from a major development by Royal Philips with the recent announcement that the company has CE marked its cardiac troponin I (cTnI) blood test on the Minicare I‐20 handheld device. Minicare cTnI delivers laboratory-comparable test results in less than 10 minutes near the patient, reducing the time needed to decide on treatment.
Only a single drop of blood is needed, and the result is delivered while the patient is being assessed and a medical history taken. This simplifies the patient‐doctor interaction, helping clinicians provide the best possible care for their patients.
Current guidelines for the diagnosis of myocardial infarction require blood test results of the biomarker cardiac troponin for the 90% of patients who present at A&E with chest pain but are not diagnosed by an ECG. “Blood samples are usually analysed in the hospital laboratory, which can easily take more than an hour to get the result back to the A&E clinician. Point-of-care testing can help to reduce the turnaround time significantly,” said Dr Paul Collinson (St George’s University Hospitals NHS
Foundation Trust).
For high‐risk cardiac patients, such as those with acute coronary syndrome, fast triage and rapid initiation of treatment are critical in order to improve patient outcomes and save lives. Only 10% of chest pain patients can be diagnosed by an ECG, the rest need to rely on additional cardiac marker testing for the diagnosis of myocardial infarction. Clinicians often have to wait up to six hours before it can be decided if they can discharged the patients safely, or if they need to admit them for further tests. Use of the Minicare cTnI supports a reduction of the diagnostic protocol by up to three hours..
