Canadi EM - By Shauna Jose - February 02, 2022
“Acute aortic syndrome (AAS) is a rare but time-dependent emergency, with a linear mortality increase of 2% per hour of diagnostic delay. It is also difficult to diagnose, with a miss rate of 25% and misdiagnosis rates up to 38%. The gold standard for AAS diagnosis is CT imaging. Although CT imaging is readily available in most EDs, it is impractical to CT scan every patient presenting with chest pain for a multitude of reasons, including increased exposures, length of stay, and resource costs. As such, there is a clear need for guidelines that identify patients at risk for AAS, in order to facilitate further workup.
This Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG), developed by Ohle et al. in 20201, allows ED physicians to efficiently categorize patients into risk-stratified groups based on a quick history and physical exam. This CPG was compiled by community and academic ED physicians with extensive clinical and methodological expertise, who utilized the GRADE methodology to adapt pre-existing high-quality clinical practice guidelines from the American Heart Association and European Society of Cardiology…”