We only use point of care troponin testing in our Urgent Care Centre at Burnley General Hospital where we do not have access to high sensitive Troponin Laboratory Testing and do not have an Emergency department on this site .
The Point of Care Troponin test we use is not high sensitive but is used in conjunction with a clinical algorithm (TMACS) for the cardiac sounding chest pain pathway, introduced in September 2018.
The point of care troponin contributes to the assessment of risk for Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS). Patients classed as very low risk of ACS remain at Urgent Care and have a repeat point of care Troponin at 3 hours after the first one. All other patients are transferred to Royal Blackburn hospital and put on the appropriate pathway. At 3 hours the very low risk group at Urgent Care have a repeat point of care troponin and this result goes into an algorithm called 3MACS, patients may be discharged at this point or be placed on another clinical pathway. Previous to introducing the point of care troponin, all cardiac sounding chest pain patients had to be ambulanced to ED at royal Blackburn hospital.
We use the Abbott I-Stat to measure the point of care Troponin and the sample type is venous in lithium heparin preservative. We have not introduced point of care Troponin testing at our ED which is on our Royal Blackburn site as we have laboratory high sensitive troponin available on this site.
