LOS ANGELES — New blood tests can quickly and reliably show if a person is having a heart attack soon after chest pains start, a time when current tests are not definitive, two studies found.
The new tests give a much better way to tell who needs help fast. Each year, 15 million people in the United States and Europe go to emergency rooms with symptoms of a heart attack, but most are not truly suffering one.
Those having a heart attack need to have blocked arteries opened quickly to limit damage to the heart muscle from lack of blood.
Doctors currently have two main ways of diagnosing a heart attack. They can use an electrocardiogram, or EKG, to measure the electrical activity of the heartbeat. But that test is not always conclusive.
Doctors also use blood tests to detect elevated levels of a heart-muscle protein, but they take longer, and by that time, damage may have occurred.
Two European studies published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine found that the newer blood tests can improve early diagnosis soon after a person feels chest pain.
The Associated Press
