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Patients those who have longer-lasting chest pain are more likely to have a heart attack than those who have it for a shorter duration, a new study has found.

Every year, eight to 10 million people in the United States admit to emergency departments for chest pain. But only around 15–30 per cent of them are having a heart attack.

In the research it was found that patients with chest pain of short duration, less than 5 minutes, are less likely to have a heart attack and have a good prognosis at 30 days.

“The variety of symptoms any one patient may experience during a heart attack is a challenge to the physician who is trying to distinguish between patients who are having a heart attack and those who are not,” said James McCord, who is a cardiologist at Henry Ford Hospital on the research team.

“Although an electrocardiogram (ECG) and cardiac markers in the blood are important in the evaluation of patients with a possible heart attack, they are not 100 per cent accurate,” McCord later added.

Of 426 patients included in the study, less than around 9 per cent had a final diagnosis of hear attach, with average chest pain duration of 120 minutes, compared with 40 minutes in patients without heart attack.

“These findings suggest that patients with chest pain lasting less than five minutes may be evaluated as an out-patient in their doctor’s office; while patients with chest pain greater than 5 minutes, without a clear cause, should seek prompt medical evaluation in an emergency department,” said McCord.