The clinical impact of the universal diagnosis of myocardial infarction.

BACKGROUND

All of the recent guidelines now endorse the use of troponin as the biomarker or choice for the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

METHODS

Review of the recent guidelines criteria.

RESULTS

Rising and/or falling values of troponin in patients who appear to have ischemic heart disease will result in the diagnosis of AMI. The recent guidelines emphasize the use of the 99th percentile value for troponin and suggest it should be measurable with a high level of precision. They also suggest how to operationalize determining a significant change for patients who appear to have recurrent infarction and classify AMI into five subtypes.

CONCLUSIONS

Understanding these criteria will be important to a consistent approach to the diagnosis of AMI in the future.