Serum Enzyme Assays in Acute Myocardial Infarction

Excerpt

To the editor: In a recent review Lee and Goldman (1) state that they do not recommend the use of a single cardiac enzyme assay to exclude the diagnosis of myocardial infarction in the emergency room. Because this view could be interpreted as a guideline against routine creatine kinase testing of patients with chest pain in the emergency room, we would like to comment on our experience.

During a prospective study in February 1982 (2), we evaluated 252 such patients with chest pain, including 76 ultimately diagnosed as having acute myocardial infarction by the criteria of Goldman and colleagues (3).