Abstract

Objective: Cerebrovascular diseases have a high rate in emergency services. We investigated the value of MMX in plasma for early diagnosis among the patients with suspected cerebrovascular disease and the correlation between the emergency, triage and neurology physician diagnoses.

Material and Methods: It is a prospective study carried out with 83 patients. Pre-prepared forms were filled with the data about the patients. Samples of 1cc venous blood were measured for MMX and the results classified as normal or pathologic. The correlation between the results and physician diagnosis was investigated.

Results: 44 (53%) of 83 patients were male, 39 (47%) were female. The average age was 69.1 (37-90) years. Neurology physician diagnosis, accepted as the gold standard, was compared with the triage, emergency physician diagnosis and MMX results by ROC curve analysis, and the difference was not significiant (p>0.05). When the diagnoses of the emergency physician were compared with the MMX results, the compatiblity for definite and probable strokes were 100% and 92.1%. The rates for triage physician were 100% and 96.4%.

Conclusion: As a result of this study we can say that the stroke probablity is high if MMX is high in patients with suspected cerebrovascular disease, but more studies with large population groups are needed for specifity assessment.