Why the study?
Acute aortic syndromes carry high mortality if untreated and diagnosis is often mistaken or overlooked, with no point-of-care biochemical test currently established to reliably identify dissection.
Biomarkers could accelerate the diagnostic pathway for acute aortic syndromes, although no reliable point-of-care biochemical test currently exists to positively identify dissection.
Prompt imaging hinges on clinical suspicion in atypical acute aortic syndrome presentations; leaves open development of a point-of-care biomarker to improve timely diagnosis.
Acute aortic syndromes have an incidence of >30 per million per annum and a high mortality without definitive treatment. Survival may relate to the speed of diagnosis. Although pain is the most common symptom, there is a large fraction of patients in whom the diagnosis may be mistaken or overlooked. Currently, a high index of clinical suspicion is the chief prompt that diverts a patient into a definitive algorithm of imaging investigations. Although there is no point-of-care biochemical test that can be reliably used to positively identify dissection, biomarkers are available that could accelerate the diagnostic pathway and thereby expedite treatment.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Ranasinghe et al. (2010) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 related papers. Consider them for comparative context: