“Troponin-negative chest pain”—a diagnostic evasion?

Certainly "troponin-negative chest pain" is not a diagnosis but it is a perfectly serviceable label that permits the patient to be returned to the primary care setting where, if the pain is recurrent, non-cardiac causes, such as gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal or psychiatric, can be evaluated by the general practitioner.

Expecting this process, which takes time and a knowledge of the patient's medical and social background, to take place in the middle of the night in the madhouse that is the modern secondary care medical assessment unit is frankly unrealistic..