A FIRST-of-its-kind blood test could slash the number of heart attacks and deaths in A&E patients, a study shows.
The test helps diagnose heart muscle injury in one in five patients — reducing their risk of another heart attack by 10 per cent after five years, Edinburgh University researchers found.
Getty3D Rendering – Chest Pain – Heart Attack – Medical Illustration[/caption]
Around 100,000 Brits are admitted to hospital for heart attacks every year.
Dr Ken Lee said: “In the past, clinicians may have been falsely reassured by less sensitive tests, discharging patients that appeared not to have heart disease.
“This new high sensitivity test is the tool they needed, prompting them to look deeper and helping them to identify and treat both heart attacks and less obvious heart problems.
“In our trial, introducing this test led to an impressive reduction in the number of future heart attacks and deaths.”
Heart diseases cause around a quarter of all UK deaths — more than 160,000 a year.
Some 1.4million Brits have survived a heart attack, which is caused by a blockage of blood flow to the heart, starving it of oxygen.
This can cause injury to the heart muscle, which can lead to permanent scarring and weakening of the organ.
However, early detection can help reduce the extent of injury by allowing doctors to treat it straight away.
The study, published in the BMJ, looked at a new type of blood test that is more sensitive than old ones that look for a protein in the blood called troponin.
They used the tests on 50,000 people who arrived at 10 emergency departments across Scotland with a suspected heart attack between 2013 and 2016.
More than 10,000 had high troponin levels, indicating they had heart injury.
One in five of these could only be spotted by the new test, researchers said.
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, of the British Heart Foundation, said: “Medical professionals in emergency departments need the most efficient and accurate tools to look after people.
“This particularly applies to those who arrive with a suspected heart attack. Such a time-sensitive and life-threatening condition requires the very best diagnostic tests.
“It is very encouraging to see that the new test is better at predicting long-term outcomes for these patients, whether they had a heart attack or a different kind of heart injury.”
What are the symptoms of a heart attack?
Symptoms of a heart attack can include:
chest pain – a feeling of pressure, heaviness, tightness or squeezing across your chest
pain in other parts of the body – it can feel as if the pain is spreading from your chest to your arms (usually the left arm, but it can affect both arms), jaw, neck, back and tummy
feeling lightheaded or dizzy
sweating
shortness of breath
feeling sick (nausea) or being sick (vomiting)
an overwhelming feeling of anxiety (similar to a panic attack)
coughing or wheezing
Source: The NHS