A new blood test can rule out suspected heart attack in just 20 minutes. This test which measures cardiac myosin-binding protein C (cMyC) was found to be twice as accurate as the conventional troponin test at detecting damage to the heart muscle. More than two-thirds of people presenting with chest pain will not have a heart attack. In around nine in ten cases, the signs are a false alarm - and can signal something as harmless as indigestion.
Currently, patients complaining of chest pain have to wait at least three hours to get troponin test results. With the new test, almost half of patients can be given an accurate diagnosis on the spot. Diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) has become complex as only a small proportion of patients demonstrate diagnostic changes in ECG. Consequently, diagnosis of AMI has become more dependent on the measurement cardiac troponin I (cTnI) or…
