Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chest pain is one of the most common causes of the admission to the emergency departments. It, however, can be due to numerous diseases some of which are life threatening. OBJECTIVES: In the current study, we evaluated the prognostic value of TIMI (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction) and Modified TIMI risk scores to stratify the risk for patients with atypical chest pain being discharged from the emergency department. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In a prospective-analytic study, we collected data from 1020 patients with atypical chest pain enrolled to the study. All eligible patients were visited by the emergency medicine residents who were trained for this study. Based on the criteria in both systems, the emergency medicine attending decided on either discharging or hospitalizing patients. Patients were allocated into 2 equal groups randomly. In order to predict the opposing accidents in 30 days (coronary revascularization, myocardial infarction, and all-cause death) TIMI risk scores and Modified TIMI risk scores were assessed based on TIMI risk score (0 or 1) and Modified TIMI risk score (0 or 1). RESULTS: No significant difference could be observed between both groups regarding demographic characteristics, ejection fraction, left ventricle hypertrophy, TRS criteria, risk factors and the history of coronary artery stenosis. None of the atypical chest pain patients discharged based on TIMI and modified TIMI risk scores experienced any adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained from this study support the idea that the TIMI and modified TIMI risk scores might be valuable tools that could be used to stratify the risk of patients with atypical chest pain in the emergency department.