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Patients who present with possible aortic dissection (AD) often need extensive testing to rule out the diagnosis. A simple blood test with a high sensitivity for AD would be very useful and would obviate the need for time-consuming imaging studies. To evaluate whether d-dimer testing might fill this role, researchers conducted a retrospective chart review of all patients who had received a final emergency department diagnosis of AD at one Level I trauma center from October 1996 to September 2000 and identified those who had undergone d-dimer testing (a semiquantitative latex agglutination assay was used for d-dimer testing at this institution during the study period).
Of the 156 patients with an ED diagnosis of AD, 7 (4.5%) had undergone d-d…