The American journal of cardiology
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Comparative Study
Long-term prognostic value of serial troponin T bedside tests in patients with acute coronary syndromes.
The early presence of troponin T in serum strongly predicts short-term mortality and myocardial infarction in patients with acute coronary syndromes. We investigated the long-term outcome of the prognostic significance of the troponin T rapid bedside assay (TROPT) and compared this with the quantitative troponin T assay (cTnT enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), myoglobin and creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) mass. One hundred sixty-three patients with chest pain and suspected acute coronary syndromes were studied and followed prospectively for 3 years. ⋯ Early myoglobin results were significantly prognostic for cardiac mortality up to 12 hours after admission (RR 3.7; 95% CI 1.0 to 12.0). In contrast, serial CK-MB mass measurements were not predictive of mortality. Thus, a combination of a baseline TROPT and an additional TROPT 12 hours or later identifies a subgroup of patients at high risk for subsequent mortality and reinfarction, both at short-term but also at long-term.
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Comparative Study
Can we define patients with no and those with some chance of survival when found in asystole out of hospital?
We describe the epidemiology, prognosis, and circumstances at resuscitation among a consecutive population of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) with asystole as the arrhythmia first recorded by the Emergency Medical Service (EMS), and identify factors associated with survival. We included all patients in the municipality of Göteborg, regardless of age and etiology, who experienced an OHCA between 1981 and 1997. There were a total of 4,662 cardiac arrests attended by the EMS during the study period. ⋯ Multivariate analysis among witnessed arrests indicated short time to arrival of the MCCU (p < 0.001) and no treatment with atropine (p = 0.05) as independent predictors of survival. Fifty-five percent of patients discharged alive had none or small neurologic deficits (cerebral performance categories 1 or 2). No patients > 70 years old with unwitnessed arrests (n = 211) survived to discharge.