Performance of highly sensitive troponin I in diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction

Abstract

Here, we evaluated the clinical performances of highly sensitive troponin I (hsTnI). The areas under the curve (AUC) obtained by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) were 0.869 for hsTnI and 0.739 for CK-MB. The hsTnI level was significantly higher in the AMI group than in any other disease groups including the angina pectoris and congestive heart failure (CHF) groups. When 26.2 pg/mL was used as the cutoff level for the diagnosis of AMI, the sensitivity and specificity of hsTnI level were 81.7% and 72.6%, respectively. Assessment of the dependence of the positivity for hsTnI in AMI on time of AMI onset showed a 54.2% positivity in a group within two hours from its onset and a 62.2% positivity in a group within four hours from its onset. Although no statistically significant correlation between the level of hsTnI and the degree of coronary artery stricture or position of the stricture in the coronary artery was seen, the patient group with 100% stricture showed a higher hsTnI level than that with less than 100% stricture. We conclude here that hsTnI is excellent for AMI diagnosis, owing to its sensitive and specific response to ischemic myocardial damage.