A recent study published by the British Heart Foundation found that a new, more sensitive and gender-specific troponin test developed by ACVP partner Abbott could double rates of heart attack diagnosis in women.

As it stands, despite statistics showing that men and women die from heart disease at equal rates in the US, only ten percent of women reporting chest pains will be diagnosed with a heart attack as opposed to twenty percent of men.

This inaccurate spread results from a single diagnostic threshold for both men and women, despite the fact that troponin levels can be twice as high in men than in women.

The Abbott ARCHITECT stat High Sensitive Troponin-I test can detect much lower levels of troponin, and when combined with gender-specific diagnostic thresholds, can double the rate of heart attack diagnoses in women to levels comparable to the diagnosis rate in men.

Do lower diagnosis rates affect your work in the cath lab?

Are more women admitted for emergency catheterizations due to lower diagnosis rates of heart attack risk? What's your experience?