Albumin cobalt binding assay to rule out acute coronary syndrome.

The purpose of this study was to validate the Albumin Cobalt Binding (ACB) assay at the Seattle Veterans Affairs (VA) Hospital to determine if it would provide an earlier rule-out of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in patients, compared to current use of cardiac injury markers. This study compares the distribution of ischemia modified albumin (IMA) values of our patient population to those provided by the kit manufacturer. IMA values were determined photometrically on a Roche Modular Analytical System on 200 subjects: 69 subjects not experiencing chest pain (normals), 78 subjects presenting to the emergency room (ER) with chest pain whose initial and subsequent troponin results were negative (non-converters), and 53 subjects presenting to the ER with chest pain whose initial troponin result was negative but subsequent troponin results were positive (converters).