Siemens Launches High-sensitivity Troponin Test for Faster Diagnosis of Heart Attacks

July 25, 2018 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared Siemens Healthineers 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.

The new tests can shorten the time doctors need to diagnose a life-threatening heart attacks. The time to first results is 10 minutes. 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 company said its high-sensitivity performance of the two new Siemens 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.[1,2] 

Chest pain is the cause of more than 8 million visits annually nationwide to emergency departments, but only 5.5 percent of those visits lead to serious diagnoses such as heart attacks.[3] 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 Alan Wu, M.D., chief of clinical chemistry and toxicology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

Siemens is launching the product at the 70th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo taking place July 31 to Aug. 2 in Chicago.

For more information: www.siemens-healthineers.com

Watch the related VIDEO: Use of High Sensitivity Troponin Testing in the Emergency Department — Interview with James Januzzi, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital
 

 
References:

1. Eggers K, Jernberg T, Ljung L, Lindahl B. High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin-Based Strategies for the Assessment of Chest Pain Patients—A Review of Validation and Clinical Implementation Studies. Clin Chem. 2018;64(7). DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2018.287342

2. Collinson P. High-sensitivity troponin measurements: challenges and opportunities for the laboratory and the clinician. Annals of Clinical Biochemistry. 2016;53(2) 191–195. DOI: 10.1177/0004563215619946

3. Hsia RY, Hale Z, Tabas JA. A National Study of the Prevalence of Life-Threatening Diagnoses in Patients With Chest Pain. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(7):1029–1032. DOI:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.2498