New Troponin Assays

New Troponin Assays May Help Identify MI Earlier

By Todd Neale, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: December 27, 2011 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

A next-generation, highly sensitive troponin I assay may help speed the diagnosis of myocardial infarction (MI) among patients presenting to the emergency department with acute chest pain, researchers found. Using a diagnostic cutoff of greater than the 99th percentile of 32 pg/mL, the Architect STAT High Sensitive Troponin I assay had a negative predictive value of 94.7% at admission and 99.4% at three hours after admission, according to Stefan Blankenberg, MD, from the University Heart Center Hamburg in Germany, and colleagues./.../