Chest pain is one of the most common ailments sending people to emergency rooms and deciding who should be hospitalized, is a numbers game. Dr. Sonela Skenderi, a cardiologist at Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, says doctors use a low risk chest pain protocol to determine which patients can safely be released. She says it includes the HEART Score, an acronym for a patients history, EKG, age, risk factors and troponin, an enzyme released during a heart related injury such a heart attack.
Patients get a number score for each category, one point for low risk, two points for average risk and three points for high risk. The higher the score, the higher the risk for that patient to suffer an imminent heart attack. Patients with low scores are sent home with appointments for follow-up care. Patients with higher scores will remain hospitalized for treatment.
Dr. Skenderi says this protocol is saving patients a lot of aggravation. They're not being hospitalized needlessly, they're not wasting time on the phone trying to set up follow-up medical appointments and they're saving medical insurance dollars.