Raised level of heart attack protein linked to heightened risk of death, study shows

To explore this further, they tracked the survival of 20,000 hospital patients who had had a troponin blood test for any reason between June and August 2017 at a large teaching hospital, regardless of the original clinical indication.

Cardiac troponin was high in 1085 (just under 5.5%) patients. Some 1782 (9%) patients died after a year, and a total of 2825 (14%) had died just over 2 years (809 days) later. Patients were nearly 4 times as likely to die if their cardiac troponin test result was high (45%) as those whose test results fell within the normal range (12%).

Further analysis accounting for age, sex, hospital location, and kidney function revealed that an abnormally high cardiac troponin level was independently associated with a 76% heightened risk of death, not only from both cardiovascular disease, but also other causes.

Reference: Association between troponin level and medium-term mortality in 20 000 hospital patients, Heart, DOI 10.1136/heartjnl-2023-322463