Sex differences of troponin test performance in chest pain patients.
Int J Cardiol. 2015 Mar 19;187:246-251
Authors: Slagman A, Searle J, Vollert JO, Storchmann H, Büschenfelde DM, von Recum J, Vlasny D, Ale-Abaei A, Koch M, Müller C, Müller R, Somasundaram R, Möckel M
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Current guidelines recommend troponin as the preferred biomarker to diagnose acute myocardial infarction (AMI) irrespective of the patient's sex. Recent reports have shown that sex-specific cut-offs should be considered but studies investigating sex-differences in the diagnostic accuracy of cardiac troponins are sparse.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the diagnostic performance of cardiac troponin at admission (cTn) under routine conditions is influenced by patient's sex.
METHODS: Between 15th of February 2009 and 15th of February 2010, women (n=1648) and men (n=2305) who presented to the emergency department with chest pain (n=3954) were enrolled. The diagnostic performance of the routine, contemporary sensitive cTn assays (TnI; Stratus® CS, Siemens and TnT; Roche Diagnostics) at baseline for the diagnosis of non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) was analyzed.
RESULTS: NSTEMI was diagnosed in 7.3% (n=287) of all patients. Men were more likely to be diagnosed with NSTEMI (8.8%; n=202) as compared to women (5.2%; n=85; p<0.001). Sensitivity was 56.1% (95% CI: 44.7-67.0%) in women and 70.1% (95% CI: 63.1-76.4%) in men. Specificity was 96.8% (95% CI: 95.6-97.7%) in women and 94.5% (95% CI: 93.3-95.6%) in men. This resulted in a lower positive predictive value (PPV) for women (53.5%; 95% CI: 42.4-64.3) as compared to men (60.8%; 95% CI: 54.1-67.2) and a slightly higher negative predictive value (NPV) for women: 97.1% (95% CI: 96.0-97.9) vs. 96.3% (95% CI: 95.2-97.2) in men.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study underline that the performance of cTn for the diagnosis of NSTEMI depends on a patient's sex, with a lower sensitivity and NPV in women. The definition and implementation of sex-specific cut-off values for cTn into clinical routine seems to be highly recommendable.
PMID: 25838225 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]