Improved efficiency and cost reduction in the emergency department by replacing contemporary sensitive with high-sensitivity cardiac troponin immunoassay.

Abstract

The Authors planned this study to evaluate the impact of replacing a contemporary-sensitive with HS cTnI immunoassay on hospital and laboratory workload. The authors say that, 'Despite some evidence, the clinicians are still hesitant to replace the former so-called contemporary-sensitive methods with HS-cTn techniques, justifying this reluctance with concerns of overutilization, possible over diagnosis of cardiac injuries, overcrowding of emer-gency departments (EDs), and excess of cardiac invasive testing. Several factors have lead clinicians to use terms such as "troponin leak", "false-positive" troponin elevation, or "troponinemia". The results of this study show substantial organizational and economic benefits by replacing con-temporary-sensitive with HS cTnI immunoassays. This is very important question because there are some areas such as acute non-ST elevation coro-nary syndromes (NSTEMI) and in elderly patients, the specificity is very low for the simultaneous presence of factors that can alter the dosage of HS-cTnI values.