Experts to highlight new diagnostic products, tools to identify heart attacks at 2015 AACC Annual Meeting

The 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, the leading annual event for laboratory medicine, will open on Sunday, July 26, in Atlanta, Georgia. This year's meeting will host more than 400 educational sessions on topics ranging from personalized medicine and infectious diseases to point-of-care and laboratory-developed tests, and will feature more than 200 new cutting edge diagnostic products.

In addition to a full schedule of symposia, plenary sessions, courses, and poster sessions, the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting will showcase:

•First-ever live research experiment to improve testing methods to identify heart attacks and the risk of their future occurrence. AACC annual meeting attendees will have the opportunity to donate blood samples onsite that will be studied in a groundbreaking scientific initiative to improve testing for heart attacks. The aim of this initiative is to establish a baseline for the protein troponin in healthy adults. This research will accelerate the differentiation of heart attacks from other conditions with similar symptoms in the emergency room, and improve identification of patients at increased risk for cardiovascular events.

•The latest tools from top medical diagnostics manufacturers. Exhibitors will be showing the latest in point-of-care diagnostic tests, as well as tests that will be less invasive, faster, and cheaper. These include:

oThe i-STAT Total β-hCG, the first and only handheld blood test for pregnancy. Research has shown that nine out of the 11 most popular hospital urine pregnancy tests are unreliable after the first few weeks of pregnancy. In emergency situations, this new blood test could play a crucial role in accurately determining a woman's pregnancy status before she receives medical treatment that could harm her baby.

oThe Xprecia Stride Coagulation Analyzer, winner of the prestigious 2015 Red Dot Award for product design. This is the first truly handheld instrument that enables healthcare providers to determine - in the course of a regular doctor's office visit - whether a patient who is on blood-thinning medication for the prevention of heart attack and stroke is at risk for uncontrollable bleeding.

Source: AACC