Researchers from Aarhus University Hospital have received 1.9 million kroner from the Danish Council for Independent Research for a project that will revolutionise the treatment of blood clots.
Some 12,000 Danes are annually hospitalised with blood clots in the heart, but a lot more people – about 70,000 – are often unnecessarily hospitalised because of chest pain and other symptoms of possible heart attack.
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“Our goal is to be able to determine already in the ambulance, with a blood test, whether there is a small blood clot or whether it’s a false alarm and the [chest] pain is caused, for example, by muscle tension which does not require hospitalisation,” explains Christian Juhl Terkelsen, a senior doctor at the department of heart disease at Aarhus University Hospital and the head of the new project.
“The high mortality rate [in patients with heart attack] is caused by small blood clots and therefore it is important to catch and treat [the condition] as soon as possible, meanwhile about 40 percent of the hospitalised patients do not have any serious issues.”
The new research project promises to bring great economic benefits to the health care system.
Today, patients suspected for having small blood clots can be hospitalised for up to two days before they are transported to one of the country’s major cardiac centres if it turns out they need an angioplasty.
