A trial in A&E departments found that a new way of measuring troponin – a protein released into the blood after a heart injury – could reduce future heart attacks in at-risk patients by 10 per cent after five years.
Those who benefited most, however, were patients with a heart muscle injury caused by other heart conditions, such as heart failure, heart valve conditions and heart arrhythmias.
The research team, led by the University of Edinburgh, found that these patients saw a nearly 10 per cent drop in future hospital admissions and deaths in the five years after getting the new test, compared to those who had the older, less sensitive test.
Enhanced test
The updated test measures very low levels of troponin in the blood much more accurately than older versions.
Troponin is released into the blood during a heart attack or when the heart is injured due to other heart conditions. Different troponin blood tests have been used for years by doctors to help diagnose these conditions in people with chest pains and related symptoms.
To assess the benefits of the new test, the researchers studied the results of nearly 50,000 people who arrived at 10 emergency departments across Scotland with a suspected heart attack between 2013 and 2016.
They used routinely collected health record data and DataLoch, a data service, to follow all participants for five years.
Subtle signs
The new test revealed that more than 10,000 patients had high troponin levels, indicating heart injury. With the high sensitivity picking up more subtle warning signs, around one in five of these patients were only spotted by the new test.
By identifying heart injury in patients who may otherwise have gone unnoticed and untreated, the researchers hope that more people could receive the specialist heart care they need to avoid more serious events in the future.
Having already rolled out the new test widely to emergency departments across the country, the UK is now ahead of the curve when it comes to heart attack and heart injury detection, researchers say.
The study, published in the BMJ, was funded by the British Heart Foundation.