PROFESSOR WILLIAM PARSONAGE Senior Cardiologist, The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Clinical Director, Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation (AusHSI), QUT
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JAIMI GREENSLADE Principal Research Fellow at Queensland Health and QUT
Closing The Gap
on Chest Pain The Problem
urgent life-saving treatment and reliably ruling this
Warning signs of a heart attack can strike anyone
out in the others who are safe to go home. This
at any time. Fortunately, most people will turn out
need to balance efficiency with safety is a constant
not to have a serious cause for their symptoms, but
challenge faced by clinicians and health services.
it is essential to go to hospital to get checked out.
The Road So Far
Symptoms like chest discomfort, tightness and pain are one of the leading causes that people present to hospital emergency departments accounting for almost 1 in 10 presentations. This creates a lot of work for busy hospitals — quickly identifying all of those people who are having, or at immediate risk of having, a heart attack who need to be admitted to hospital for
24
The Health Advocate • AUGUST 2022
Over ten years ago Prof Louise Cullen, A/Prof Jaimi Greenslade and I started studying this problem. Through a series of clinical studies, and with broad international collaboration, we developed accelerated diagnostic protocols that can reliably rule out heart attack in the majority of people but with a foundation of safety ensuring that the chance of a heart attack being ‘missed’ would
