Performance of a Revised Cardiac Troponin Method That Minimizes Interferences from Heterophilic Antibodies

Background: Recent guidelines for use of cardiac tropo-nin to detect cardiac damage and for cardiovascular risk stratification have made increasingly sensitive troponin assays important. Troponin assays continue to be plagued by interferences caused by heterophilic anti-bodies (HAs). We evaluated the performance of a re-vised cardiac troponin I (cTnI) assay designed to have increased analytical sensitivity and to minimize the effect of HAs. Methods: The revised Dade Behring Dimension ® cTnI assay was evaluated according to NCCLS EP5-A at five institutions. Plasma samples from 14 309 patients were assayed by the original Dimension cTnI assay. To iden-tify samples that may have interfering HAs, samples with values>1.4 g/L were reanalyzed on the Dad