Troponin Level Increase

Hey all you Cardiac nurses..Or anyone who may be able to answer this..when evaluating troponin lab levels what is considered an significant increase (greater than 10) in the lab draws..In other words if a patient has a first level of 0.061 and in 6 hours it is 0.072 is that an increase greater than 10 or do the mean literally add 10 which if you added it 0.061 it would then be 10.061....not sure how high these levels can actually go.

They can go higher than 10, but most commonly I see troponin levels in the 1-4 range when dealing with a NSTEMI. Going from a 0.061 to a 0.072 is going from insignificant to barely elevated. An increase from 1.115 to 2.425 would be significant.

what does troponin leak means?

Of course it depends on the patient.

There are lots of conditions besides coronary occlusion that can cause trop elevation- PE, sepsis, other bad stuff.

In my experience with a big Stemi you'll see it go high in whole numbers.

lots of patients in the hospital for non cardiac reasons will be diagnosed with note I but the trop won't go big

also it's a trend and will usually peak I think 6-8 hrs (?) after the event