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Are you afraid of getting heart attacks as you get older?
Now, there may be a blood test to completely dispel that fear.
This blood test could accurately judge whether or not someone is at high risk for heart attack, based on that test result only.
Why is this important?
When people come into hospitals complaining of chest pain, usually doctors have to perform a complicated series of tests. They use a blood test that measures troponin, a chemical that damaged heart muscles release into blood. A high or even slight elevation of troponin can indicate heart damage.
Generally, patients are admitted, given the test, and then tested again twelve hours later. This means that people who aren’t going to have a heart attack end up staying in the hospital for twelve hours anyway.
This new troponin test measures finer levels of troponin than the old one. The most important thing about it is that it needs to be administered only once.
The study done with it set out to find whether or not this test would be better at predicting heart attack. It was tested on 6,304 patients in the United States and Scotland.
The high-sensitivity test ended up being 99.6 percent accurate in predicting who was at risk for heart attack and who wasn’t.
“Low plasma troponin concentrations identify two-thirds of patients at very low risk of cardiac events who could be discharged from the hospital,” said researchers involved in the study.
Just as a reminder, heart attacks present differently in women and en. Men will experience upper body pain, stomach pain, anxiety, shortness of breath and sweating. Women experience all of these, plus other symptoms, like back and jaw pain. If you think you’re having a heart attack, get to an emergency room ASAP.
