High-Sensitivity Troponin For Better Or Worse

The premise of this article seems fine – as we all learned in medical school, the LDH CK-MB Troponin is now our most sensitive and specific assay for myocardial injury, but, we were also taught that it takes a certain amount of time for the assay to turn positive.  Thus, the inpatient rule-out with multiple sets of cardiac enzymes.  These investigators looked a new assay, with a lower detection limit, and hope to prove that it has 100% sensitivity with a single measurement, obviating the need for additional enzymatic testing.

There were two phases – a cohort observational portion and a clinical deployment portion.  The observational phase was intended to verify prior data suggesting 99% sensitivity for the assay and, of their 703 patients, 195 had initial hs-cTnT levels of <3ng/L – and none had acute MI in their 6 month follow-up period (97.8 to 100% sensitivity).  In their clinical deployment phase, they collected 915 patients who received two sets of the hs-cTnT assay, and found that only one patient had a subsequent hs-cTnT rise after an initially undetectable hs-cTnT, giving a sensitivity of 99.8% (99.1-100).

So, they say, there is no longer any realistic need to get multiple sets of cardiac enzymes in a patient if the first level is undetectable.  This is probably true, but whether it reduces inpatient stays and follow-up invasive cardiac testing is another matter.  My guess is that widespread availability of this assay would lead to clinicians ordering troponins on patients they wouldn’t have previously ordered them on, and – perhaps you know how this story will probably play out – a story in which use of the d-Dimer assay would decrease chest imaging for pulmonary embolism, but didn’t.  Too many clinicians are applying it incorrectly and using its weak positive likelihood ratio to light up patients unnecessarily, and I expect this to lead to more patients being kept for testing, not fewer, as the authors propose.