Copyright Charleston Post and Courier
FLORENCE — MUSC Health Florence Medical Center has become the first hospital in South Carolina to use a new test that helps doctors detect heart attacks faster and accurately. The test runs on Abbott’s portable i-STAT 1 instrument, providing lab-quality results in approximately 15 minutes right at the patient’s bedside. This new test, the Abbott i-STAT High-sensitivity Troponin I Cartridge (hs-TnI), measures very small amounts of cardiac troponin I in the blood. Cardiac troponin is a protein found only in the heart, and elevated levels can signal damage to heart muscle. Because the test can be performed at the bedside, it eliminates the need to send samples to the laboratory, helping emergency teams to act more quickly when every second counts. “With our new protocol, we use the high-sensitivity troponin test, which is extremely accurate at detecting a potential heart attack,” said Bradley Russell, M.D., an emergency medicine physician who has served at Florence Medical Center for 20 years. “Now, we can see results immediately. We’ve reduced the time it takes to detect a heart injury from one hour to only 15 minutes. That means faster care for patients with possible heart attacks or acute coronary syndrome.” The addition of Abbott’s i-STAT test is expected to reduce emergency department wait times significantly, streamline testing for heart-related symptoms and improve overall patient care and outcomes.
