HEART score helping to combat CHD
Coronary heart disease has many warning signs that people often neglect to recognize. Patients regularly come in with a chief complaint of angina, which in laymen’s terms is simply chest pain coming from a section of the heart that isn’t receiving enough oxygen-rich blood. Angina usually makes people feel as if their chest is tightening in on itself, and the pain can spread into the back, shoulders, neck, and jaw. Because of the radiating track that this chest pain can take, it can be very difficult for patients to describe where exactly the pain is coming from.
One thing that many physicians have been focusing on for the past decade is finding a way to increase efficiency of evaluating patients that present with chest pain in emergency departments. The finicky thing about chest pain is that it could mean a person is experiencing something as insignificant as slight anxiety, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, it could be a warning sign of an aorta ready to burst. The huge variability in the prognosis of chest pain makes it such a stressful symptom for ER doctors to assess. They fear that if they accidentally underestimate a patient’s symptoms, they may be discharging a potentially fatal case. Because of this, many doctors have gotten in the habit of taking the conservative route by admitting the majority of patients with chest pain, regardless of the severity of the case. This can quickly exhaust hospital resources and create unnecessary financial burden for the patients.
As of 2010, a new risk stratification process has been developed to help doctors safely and accurately evaluate patients that present with chest pain. The HEART score, developed by the European Society of Cardiology, offers a 10-point scale that integrates History, EKG, Age, Risk Factors, and Troponin. As a rule of them, patients that score 1–3 are at low risk of major cardiac events and can be discharged immediately. Patients who score 4–6 are at moderate risk and are generally put in observation for further testing. Lastly, patients who score 7–10 are at very high risk of heart attack or stroke, and are therefore admitted into the hospital. This method of risk assessment has been implemented in hospitals all across America. Long Beach Memorial Care Hospital recently adopted the system in May, and are currently undergoing retrospective analysis to test the efficacy of the HEART score. So far, this method has helped not only to save hospital time, money, and resources, but also has safely considered patient cases and accurately categorized them based on their condition. This is an easy, affordable technique of evaluating chest pain, and has made it easier for doctors to detect high-risk patients earlier on, helping to expand on preventing the onset of coronary heart disease.
