B. Manage as angina, no further diagnostic tests required – Explanation

NICE do not recommend any further investigation for patients with an estimated coronary artery
disease risk of greater than 90%. This includes all men over the age of 70 years who have typical
symptoms.
Chest pain: assessment of patients with suspected cardiac chest pain
NICE issued guidelines in 2010 on the ‘Assessment and diagnosis of recent onset chest pain or
discomfort of suspected cardiac origin’.

Below is a brief summary of the key points. Please see the link for more details.

Patients presenting with acute chest pain

Immediate management of suspected acute coronary syndrome (ACS)

• glyceryl trinitrate
• aspirin 300mg. NICE do not recommend giving other antiplatelet agents (i.e. Clopidogrel) outside
  of hospital
• do not routinely give oxygen, only give if sats < 94%*
• perform an ECG as soon as possible but do not delay transfer to hospital. A normal ECG does not
  exclude ACS

Referral

• current chest pain or chest pain in the last 12 hours with an abnormal ECG: emergency admission
• chest pain 12-72 hours ago: refer to hospital the same-day for assessment
• chest pain > 72 hours ago: perform full assessment with ECG and troponin measurement before
  deciding upon further action

*NICE suggest the following in terms of oxygen therapy:

• do not routinely administer oxygen, but monitor oxygen saturation using pulse oximetry as soon as
  possible, ideally before hospital admission. Only offer supplemental oxygen to:

people with oxygen saturation (SpO2) of less than 94% who are not at risk of hypercapnic
respiratoryfailure, aiming for SpO2 of 94-98%

• people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who are at risk of hypercapnic respiratory
  failure, to achieve a target SpO2 of 88-92% until blood gas analysis is available.

Patients presenting with stable chest pain
With all due respect to NICE the guidelines for assessment of patients with stable chest pain are
rather complicated. They suggest an approach where the risk of a patient having coronary artery
disease (CAD) is calculated based on their symptoms (whether they have typical angina, atypical
angina or non-anginal chest pain), age, gender and risk factors.

NICE define anginal pain as the following:

• 1. constricting discomfort in the front of the chest, neck, shoulders, jaw or arms
• 2. precipitated by physical exertion
• 3. relieved by rest or GTN in about 5 minutes
• patients with all 3 features have typical angina
• patients with 2 of the above features have atypical angina
• patients with 1 or none of the above features have non-anginal chest pain

The risk tables are not reproduced here but can be found by clicking on the link.

If patients have typical anginal symptoms and a risk of CAD is greater than 90% then no further
diagnostic testing is required. It should be noted that all men over the age of 70 years who have
typical anginal symptoms fall into this category.
For patients with an estimated risk of 10-90% the following investigations are recommended. Note
the absence of the exercise tolerance test: