Siemens Healthineers Introduces Innovative Heart Attack Diagnosis Test

Siemens Healthineers has announced it is helping to shorten the time doctors can diagnose a life-threatening heart attack with the introduction of two assays that offer unparalleled precision. U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared High-Sensitivity Troponin I assays (TnIH) for the Atellica IM and ADVIA Centaur XP/XPT in vitro diagnostic analyzers from Siemens Healthineers to aid in the early diagnosis of myocardial infarctions—commonly known as heart attacks.

When a patient experiencing chest pain enters the emergency department, a physician orders a blood test to determine whether troponin is present. As blood flow to the heart is blocked, the heart muscle begins to die in as few as 30 to 60 minutes and releases troponin into the bloodstream.

The high-sensitivity performance of the two new Siemens Healthineers TnIH assays offers the ability to detect lower levels of troponin at significantly improved precision at the 99th percentile, and detect smaller changes in a patient’s troponin level as repeat testing occurs. This design affords clinicians greater confidence in the results with precision that provides the ability to measure slight, yet critical, changes to begin treatment. As science progresses, guidelines for determining high-sensitivity also evolves. These TnIH assays meet the latest industry guidelines.

Chest pain is the cause of more than eight million visits annually nationwide to emergency departments, but only 5.5 percent of those visits lead to serious diagnoses such as heart attacks.4 Armed with data to properly triage patients sooner or to exclude myocardial infarctions, the Siemens Healthineers TnIH assays can help support testing initiatives tied to improving patient experience.

“Our emergency department is overcrowded with patients. If we can do a more efficient job at triaging patients to receive the proper level of care and to discharge the patients who do not need to stay in the emergency department, this will have a tremendous economic advantage for our healthcare system,” said Dr. Alan Wu, Chief of Clinical Chemistry and Toxicology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

Siemens Healthineers' High-Sensitivity Troponin I Assay was presented at the 70th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo which took place July 2018 in Chicago, Il.

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