WEDNESDAY, Sept. 18, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- A new risk model lets doctors identify people with acute coronary syndrome who have the greatest risk of dying while in the hospital.
Those patients can then be targeted for life-saving interventions, says a study presented at the recent European Society of Cardiology Congress 2002.
The GRACE (Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events) uses eight factors to achieve a cumulative score that the study says is 90 percent accurate in predicting the death risk in patients with the syndrome.
Those factors are:
- Resuscitated cardiac arrest.
- Serum levels of creatinine, a biochemical marker of heart damage.
- Age.
- Increased heart rate.
- Elevated systolic (the higher figure) blood pressure.
- Killip classification of heart failure status.
- Deviation in the ST segment of the heartbeat.
- Increased levels of C-reactive protein and troponin protein.
"The GRACE model is effective, regardless of whether the patient presents with a severe or mild heart attack or severe chest pain, and can easily be done on a graph or personal digital assistant (PDA), so it could be a useful tool to guide clinical practice and plan interventions," says GRACE scientific co-chairman Keith A. A. Fox, a professor of cardiology and head of the department of medical and radiological sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The risk model was developed after analyzing data from GRACE, an international registry that collects information on more than 17,500 people from 14 countries who suffer acute coronary syndrome while in the hospital or after being discharged.
More information
The Yale University School of Medicine has more on acute coronary syndrome.
