CT for chest pain in ER gets patients home sooner

For patients who visit an emergency room with chest pains, but who don't have an abnormal EKG or elevated troponin levels, a CT scan can send them home earlier than conventional diagnostic procedures, doctors reported Wednesday. The patients are exposed to higher levels of radiation and the cost is slightly higher, but those effects are offset somewhat by the increased peace of mind associated with leaving the hospital sooner, the team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.