Undifferentiated Prehospital Chest Pain: Aetiologies and a Proof-of-Concept Model for Significant Coronary Lesions.

Background

Undifferentiated chest pain is one of the most common reasons for emergency medical service (EMS) activation, yet its aetiological spectrum remains poorly characterised in the prehospital setting. Furthermore, no clinical prediction model has been specifically developed to identify patients at risk of significant coronary lesions using only information available before hospital arrival. This study aimed to describe the aetiologies of undifferentiated prehospital chest pain and develop a proof-of-concept clinical prediction model.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective, single-centre study including 409 consecutive patients managed by the Orléans Mobile Intensive Care Unit (MICU) for undifferentiated chest pain between January and June 2024. Predictors of clinically significant coronary artery disease identified during in-hospital coronary assessment and management were evaluated using multivariable logistic regression. Model performance was assessed by discrimination and calibration, and internally validated using 1000 bootstrap resamples.

Results

Cardiological aetiologies accounted for 19% of cases, including 53 patients (13%) meeting the primary outcome of clinically significant coronary artery disease. Four independent predictors were identified: age (OR 6.7-8.9 according to category), male sex (OR 2.2), typical chest pain (OR 6.6), and a positive family history of cardiovascular disease (OR 3.4). These variables were combined to develop the HATS (History, Age, Typical chest pain, Sex) model. The model demonstrated good discrimination (AUC 0.81), and satisfactory internal calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow p = 0.88), with limited optimism after bootstrap validation.

Conclusions

This study characterises the aetiological spectrum of undifferentiated prehospital chest pain and proposes HATS as an exploratory proof-of-concept prediction model. Prospective multicentre external validation and subsequent assessment of clinical utility are required before any consideration of clinical implementation.