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To assess the clinical performance of point-of-care (POC) troponin assays, researchers evaluated troponin tests ordered by treating physicians for 1069 consecutive patients who presented to a single emergency department in Sweden. Blood specimens were tested with two POC assays from different manufacturers and two brands of laboratory assays. Results from all four assays were available for 851 patients.
The two laboratory tests, compared with the two POC tests, predicted a significantly greater proportion of all-cause mortality at 35 months (79% and 71% vs. 49% and 43%) and cardiovascular disease mortality at 35 months (88% and 81% vs. 54% and 50%).
The authors note two important limitations: (1) The study included all patients for whom a tro…