Critical pathways in cardiology
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Management of chest pain patients in the emergency department has been a dilemma because of difficulty in identifying those who can be immediately discharged and those who need to be hospitalized. We assessed the efficacy of a probability stratification model and a systematic diagnostic strategy in 1003 consecutive chest pain patients prospectively evaluated and stratified for acute coronary syndromes according to chest pain characteristics and admission electrocardiogram. Patients with no suspicion of acute coronary syndromes (n = 224) were immediately discharged, whereas those with very-high probability (n =119) were admitted to the coronary care unit. ⋯ For patients with no ST-segment elevation, chest pain type was the strongest independent predictor of acute coronary syndromes. It is concluded that chest pain type is the best single diagnostic tool to rule in/out acute coronary syndromes on admission to the emergency department. Patients with suspicious chest pain must have serum creatine kinase-MB measurements up to 9 hours postadmission to rule out acute myocardial infarction.