Short term prognosis of patients with acute coronary syndromes: the level of cardiac troponin T elevation corresponding to the “old” WHO definition of myocardial infarction

[...]future epidemiological studies will inevitably be skewed by the "new" definition with an increase in the numbers of patients diagnosed with MI, and an apparent improvement in overall prognosis likely to be related to a smaller proportion of patients with large transmural infarctions being exposed to the hazards of ventricular remodelling and heart failure. [...]our cTnT sample was taken 12 hours after onset of chest pain, as recommended for diagnostic purposes, whereas the studies which have correlated with infarct size and left ventricular ejection fraction have tended to sample either a peak result or cTnT at the plateau phase, usually 12-48 hours after onset of chest pain. 5 The two groups, CK [= or >, slanted] 400 IU/l and cTnT > 1.1 μg/l, contained different individual patients and of the 250 patients with CK [= or >, slanted] 400 IU/l, less than half (n = 115) also had a troponin concentration > 1.1 μg/l.