Date: June 30th, 2022

Reference: McGinnis et al. Major adverse cardiac event rates in moderate-risk patients: Does prior coronary disease matter? AEM June 2022.

Guest Skeptic: Dr. Corey Heitz is an emergency physician in Roanoke, Virginia. He is also the CME editor for Academic Emergency Medicine.

Case: You are working a shift in your local community emergency department (ED) when a 47-year-old male presents with chest pain. His symptoms are moderately suspicious, he has a normal EKG, and a history of hypertension. His father had a minor heart attack at the age of 63. With a negative initial troponin, this gives him a HEART score of 4. He has no history of coronary artery disease. You have been reading about the overuse of objective cardiac testing (OCT) and wonder if this patient really needs admission to the hospital.

Background: Chest pain is one of the most common presentations to the ED. Much ink has been spilled over the years on trying to find a way to safely rule-out acute coronary syndrome in these patients. Multiple clinical decision instruments have been created to risk stratify patients and guide clinicians (TIMI, GRACE, MAC, T-MAC, HE-MAC, ADAPT, VCPR, EDACS, etc).

The HEART score was originally developed in 122 patients in the Netherlands and published in 2008. Backus and colleagues published their multi-centre validation of the HEART score in 2010. Since then, there have been several studies looking at this clinical decision instrument.

We looked at a HEART Score Pathway that included a HEART Score and 0 and 3 hour cardiac troponin testing on SGEM#151 with our friend Salim Rezaie. The bottom line from that episode was that the HEART Pathway appears to have the potential to safely decrease objective cardiac testing, increase early discharge rates and cut median length of stay in low-risk chest pain patients presenting to the ED with suspicion of ACS.

In prior decades nearly all patients presenting to EDs with chest pain were admitted to hospital. If we thought about ACS, we brought them in. This would be for objective cardiac testing including stress test, CT-angiography, and/or invasive angiography. However, all this recent research into clinical decision tools and pathways to risk-stratify these patients is reducing admissions and therefore ED and hospital overcrowding [1-5].

Many patients risk stratified as “non-low” risk are admitted, but the benefit of objective cardiac testing in this cohort is unclear in the absence of elevated troponins or abnormal EKGs [6-9]. The study we will be reviewing today seeks asks if the presence of known coronary artery disease is predictive of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in a previously identified non-low risk group of patients.

Clinical Question: What is the 30-day incidence of MACE in patients who are non-low risk but have known coronary artery disease?

Reference: McGinnis et al. Major adverse cardiac event rates in moderate-risk patients: Does prior coronary disease matter? AEM June 2022.

* Population: Adult patients (age >21 years) with chest pain or suspected ACS, HEAR >4, elevated troponin, ischemic EKG or prior CAD

* Exclusions: Patients with evidence of an ST-segment elevated myocardial infarction and patients who were identified as low risk (HEAR < 4) by the HEART Pathway

* Intervention: Assessment of moderate-risk patients as described in the ...