Cardiac CT Offers a Cost-Effective Approach to Diagnose Low-Risk Chest Pain Patients

Using cardiac computed tomography (CT) to diagnose low-risk patients with chest pain is significantly less expensive--44% less than the standard of care (SOC)--and can decrease the length of hospital stay up to 20 hours.

Fifty-three low-risk chest pain patients were compared by using results from a cardiac CT-based workup and a traditional standard of care workup using nuclear stress testing. "Nothing was cut from the standard of care workup,” said Janet May, M.S., from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA), and lead author of the study.

"The current emergency department standard-of-care workup for low risk chest pain patients often involves serial cardiac enzymes, serial ECGs, and a nuclear cardiac stress test. Such a workup can take up to 30 hours and is expensive. The mean cost for the SOC workup in this study was US$7,597,” said Ms. May. "With new lower dose cardiac CT options available that lower the patient radiation dose, patients get a faster evaluation and are discharged much sooner with a cardiac CT; in less than six hours,” she said. "Once you know the case is a low risk patient with chest pain, the sooner the cardiac CT is done, the better. "Speed results in cost savings without compromising accuracy.”

According to Ms. May, emergency rooms across the United States are besieged with congestion and escalating cost issues. She noted that over six million patients present to US emergency rooms each year with chest pain and most of these are low risk. "Dealing with these patients faster and with greater cost effectiveness is a big step toward ameliorating congestion and spiraling cost,” she said.

This study was presented at the 2009 American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) annual meeting in Boston, MA, USA, on April 27, 2009.

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