When chest pain sends you to the emergency room, the doctors still have to figure out if you're having a heart attack or severe heartburn before they can treat you. Now, a new heart scan can make that process easier and could save up to $13 billion each year in unnecessary hospital stays.
The scan is called Cardiolite and Dr. James Udelson, of the New England Medical Center in Boston, says government-funded clinical trials show the device reduced unnecessary hospitalizations by 20 percent among patients coming into the emergency room with chest pain. He says those patients ultimately were found to have non-cardiac problems.
Udelson says the most important measure of the trial was that Cardiolite did not miss any real heart attacks -- so patients who really needed hospital care got it. Researchers estimate a quarter of a million people each year could avoid the anxiety of hospitalization and intensive cardiac testing with the new diagnostic tool.
Researchers say Cardiolite was tested on 2,456 emergency room patients with an average age of 53. The device allows physicians to scan the heart's pumping ability and gauge the amount of blood flow to the heart muscle without surgery.
