
This test sees most of its use in hospital emergency rooms when medical professionals suspect a recent heart attack.
Extreme emotional strain, such as grief or stress. Exercising too much or too strenuously. Pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in your lungs). Other conditions that can cause your troponin levels to increase include: However, any kind of damage to heart muscle can potentially cause the release of this chemical into your bloodstream. The most common use of troponin tests is to confirm or rule out a heart attack. They will also remain high for several days. Troponin levels usually increase sharply within three to 12 hours after a heart attack and peak about 24 hours after the heart attack. The Troponin T in your heart muscle also has a slightly different structure, which doesn’t occur anywhere else in your body. Troponin T does exist in other types of muscle, but the amounts are very limited. This kind of troponin is unique to heart muscle. There are two types of troponin that are more detectable after heart muscle damage, which use the letters I and T to tell them apart. However, damage to certain types of muscle cells can cause more troponin to escape into your blood. Under normal circumstances, it exists inside muscle cells and only freely circulates in your bloodstream in tiny amounts. Troponin is a protein, a complex chemical molecule, found in certain types of muscle in your body. Some versions of this test can only detect one type of troponin, while others can detect both. This test is also known as a cardiac troponin test, or uses the abbreviations cTn, cTnI or cTnT, depending on the specific type of test. This test is also useful when other tests are inconclusive or when you have vague symptoms. That can speed up the process of diagnosing a heart attack. Newer versions of this test are much more sensitive and can pick up far smaller amounts of this protein in your blood than before. Higher levels of troponin in your blood also mean more heart damage, which can help healthcare providers determine the severity of a heart attack. Normally, troponin stays inside your heart muscle’s cells, but damage to those cells - like the kind of damage from a heart attack - causes troponin to leak into your blood. A troponin test looks for the protein troponin (there are two forms related to your heart, troponin I and troponin T) in your blood.