Point of care Troponin testing for chest pain in acute medicine
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Does point of care troponin 1 testing for patients with chest pain improve safe patient flow in acute medicine? A retrospective analysis of outcome measures.
IRAS ID
253393
Contact name
Lyndsey D Macphee
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
To better understand the benefits and drawbacks of using a point of care troponin blood test within an acute medical assessment clinical setting. Troponin blood tests are used as a diagnostic tool in myocardial infarction and the point of care blood test results are available much faster than the clinical standard laboratory test used for diagnosis.
Currently within the clinical area point of care troponin testing is used to triage patients into inpatient and outpatient pathways within 30 mins of arrival rather than guide a final diagnosis. The laboratory test is still used to formulate a final diagnosis. This project is intended to evaluate the safety of this practice and understand if it actually reduces the length of inpatient stay. The clinical department currently pay for this point of care troponin machine and are keen to know if these costs are justified in terms of safe patient flow through the acute medicine department.
The research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of this by answering 3 specific questions:
• How safe is it to rule out myocardial infarction based biochemical laboratory troponin testing in an acute medical population? In other words what proportion of these patients are ultimately diagnosed with a myocardial infarction?
• Is the movement of patients to an outpatient area based on a point of care test safe? In other words how does the result of point of care testing differ from the above finding (standard laboratory testing) if at all?
• Does point of care blood testing and subsequent patient movement actually lead to a reduction in inpatient stay as intended?REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 2
REC reference
18/ES/0142
Date of REC Opinion
27 Nov 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion