Point-of-Care Test Helps Diagnose Heart Attack

Roche recently launched a point-of-care (POC) test that can help health care professionals accurately diagnose high-risk heart attack patients in just 12 minutes.

“POC diagnostics solutions play an integral role in an effective, sustainable health care, and their importance will further increase”, said Roland Diggelmann, chief operating officer of the Roche Diagnostics Division. “The introduction of this improved test enables health care professionals to make earlier and more accurate interventions to save patients’ lives.”

The hand-held CARDIAC test for Roche’s cobas h 232 POC diagnostic system requires no sample preparation and can therefore be used in locations where heart attack patients are typically seen first, such as an ambulance or emergency room.

To identify a suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI), the POC test measures levels of troponin T, a heart muscle protein that is released into the bloodstream during a heart attack. This accurate measurement allows health care professionals to “rule-in” patients at high risk for AMI and triage them effectively.

Based on the POC test results, high-risk patients may be sent directly to a cardiac catheterization laboratory, while lower-risk patients can be sent to the hospital ward for further investigation.

The initial results can also be combined with Roche’s Elecsys cardiac Troponin T high-sensitive test at the central laboratory in a hospital to help ensure effective treatment.