Though a minority of patients presenting to the emergency department with chest pain have acute coronary syndromes, identifying the patients who may be safely discharged and determining whether further testing is needed remains challenging. This topic is of massive importance to emergency physicians and there is a wealth of literature exploring it. Every year, in the US, there are roughly 8 million ED visits for chest pain, and of those, only 13-25% lead to the diagnosis of acute coronary syndromes or ACS.

This episode is hosted by Jeff Nusbaum, MD, and Nachi Gupta, MD. This month’s issue was authored by Dr. David Markel, of Tacoma Emergency Care Physicians and was reviewed by Dr. Keith Marill from Mass General and Dr. Andrew Schmidt of the University of Florida College of Medicine.

Links and resources:
EB Medicine - www.ebmedicine.net
Identifying Emergency Department Patients With Chest Pain who are at Low Risk for Acute Coronary Syndromes - https://tinyurl.com/y848wacl
MDCalc - www.mdcalc.com