Development of a clinical prediction rule for 30-day cardiac events in emergency department patients with chest pain and possible acute coronary syndrome.

Study Objective: Evaluation of emergency department (ED) patients with chest pain who are at low risk for acute coronary syndrome is resource intensive and may lead to false-positive test results and unnecessary downstream procedures. We seek to identify patients at low short-term risk for a cardiac event for whom additional ED investigations might be unnecessary.

Methods: We prospectively enrolled patients older than 24 years and with a primary complaint of chest pain from 3 academic EDs.