Decision Rule for Chest Pain

Development of a clinical decision rule for referral of patients presenting to primary care with chest pain: a feasibility study

Chest pain is a common presentation in primary care and referral of all patients to chest pain clinics is neither feasible nor appropriate. The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of collecting data required in order to develop a decision rule for the appropriate referral to chest pain clinics of patients with no known cardiovascular disease presenting to primary care with chest pain.

This is a prospective cohort study in Bristol, Birmingham and Oxford in practices using EMIS system. A data collection template will launch whenever a GP enters a Read code diagnosis or symptom related to chest pain. GPs are requested to collect data for all patients who present with chest pain, whether or not the GP believes this to be of cardiac origin. The template will be populated with relevant data already present in the patient's EMR, and the GP will be prompted for other data. Analysis will describe the completeness of data collection.