March 6, 2007 β Researchers from William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan have found that a simple, outpatient multislice CT can rapidly and accurately distinguish which patients with chest pain have normal coronary arteries and can go home directly from the emergency room from those who have diseased arteries requiring admission to the hospital for further care.
A new study reported in the Feb. 27 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology addresses use of multislice cardiac CT scanning in the ED for the purpose of evaluating patients with chest pain.
The benefits of rapid diagnosis and earlier treatment are also augmented by considerable cost savings. The standard diagnostic workup of chest pain (consisting of EKGs, blood tests and stress nuclear testing) fared equally well in diagnostic accuracy but took much longer in time to complete and was more costly than the high-tech CT scans.
For more information visit www.apexcardiology.com.