|
|
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Every year, millions of American adults are affected by heart disease, which is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. For years, the diagnostic approach for those seeking care with symptoms suggestive of heart disease remained the same. Those standards of care are still very much in use, though the diagnostic landscape is beginning to evolve. We now find ourselves in a new era of personalized medicine that helps clinicians to identify the diagnostic and care pathways most likely to be safe and effective based on each patient’s unique biology, genetic makeup and the expression of those genes.
The clinical potential of these emerging technologies is gaining visibility within the cardiology community. Last year, the American Heart Association (AHA) convened a panel of experts to survey advances made possible by the mapping of the human genome, to review the growing body of data related to approaches that utilize omics and the expressed genome and to provide perspectives on the impact of newer technologies on cardiovascular patient care. The resulting statement, The Expressed Genome in Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke: Refinement, Diagnosis, and Prediction, was published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics. The Statement’s authors expressed optimism regarding the progress to date in leveraging the expressed genome to advance novel diagnostic and prognostic methods. The authors also cited two currently available commercial tests as examples.
In my practice, I personally use one example cited within the Statement: the Corus CAD blood test. This test is used in the outpatient setting to help clinicians rule out obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) in stable symptomatic patients with suspected CAD. Corus CAD is a blood test that utilizes an age, sex and gene expression score (ASGES) to provide the real-time likelihood that a patient has a significant coronary artery blockage. The AHA Statement stated that the test has been proven to be valid and useful and noted that the Corus CAD test is supported by the largest body of gene expression profiling data for CAD. The Corus CAD test can be used as a first-line diagnostic to rule out the need for riskier and more expensive tests for patients with low scores.
This kind of advancement is exciting for the field of cardiology. We must also remember our individual roles in ensuring the best possible cardiac care. Patients and their clinicians must be partners. Open and honest conversations, inclusive of all symptoms and questions, are what help clinicians determine the appropriate diagnostic and care pathways. It is essential that we have all the information needed to make these decisions, and then can determine which tests are appropriate.
###