First10EM - June 15, 2020 - By Murchison C
..."One topic that I have never covered is the role of observation units for low risk chest pain (mostly because we don’t use these in Canada; we just send patients home). Therefore, I am thrilled to host a guest post by Dr. Charles Murchison, modified from an original series of blogs on the County EM blog, addressing the question: Does Observation for ACS Make Sense?...
Observation units were developed in the 1990s to help hospitals save money. We did not have the sophisticated scoring systems or lab tests that we have today, therefore we needed 12 to 24 hours to rule out MI in patients presenting with chest pain, and we needed somewhere to do this outside of a CCU. This is no longer the case. We can safely rule out MI in 3-4 hours in the ED with contemporary troponin testing..."