New Heart Attack Test Can Save More Women

A newer, more sensitive blood test helps doctors to spot an impending heart attack faster. The test seeks tiny traces of protein that indicate that the heart muscles are "damaged".

Most tests used in UK by the NHS identify higher levels of this protein, called troponin, according to bbc.com.  The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh research indicates that the test overlooks many cases of heart attack in women who have chest pain or similar symptoms.

"Our findings suggest that one reason for this difference in diagnosis rates of men and women is that we, as doctors, may have been using a threshold for troponin testing that is too high in women," is what scientists affirm.

Being a medical emergency, it is important to conduct early diagnosis and treatment that can lead to cure. Blood tests would help doctors to judge if a patient suffering from ache in the chest is having an attack or not. However, a normal result would indicate that the diagnosis is not being given attention.

The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation. It involved 1,126 men and women who were suspected of having suffered heart attacks.

The standard troponin test showed that almost twice as many men as women were diagnosed with the suspected heart attack. The ratio stood at 117: 55.

However, as soon as the researchers resorted to the more sensitive test, the number of women who suffered from heart attacks doubled to 111 or 22%. As compared to this, the "sensitive test" could just diagnose a few more men than women who had got the attacks. The scientists also noticed that the extra men and women who had been diagnosed by the sensitive tests were at a greater risk of suffering from heart attacks or deaths in the next year.

Dr Anoop Shah, who was involved in the testing, confirmed that although equivalent numbers of men and women come for tests with chest pains, men are more likely to be diagnosed with the attacks.

"At the moment one in 10 women with chest pains will be diagnosed with a heart attack compared to one in five men," he said. "Our findings suggest one reason for this difference in diagnosis rates of men and women is that we, as doctors, may have been using a threshold for troponin testing that is too high in women."

As doctors can go by blood tests, when they check and find a normal result, they feel tempted to rule out a heart attack.

"For some reason, women are less likely to have obvious symptoms and if the test result comes back negative then they might be sent home only to have an event [heart attack] in the next few months because they were not treated appropriately."

The team says that the research needs to look into the subject more intensively, to find out whether "using a lower troponin threshold for women will save more lives".