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A new age is dawning in the cardiovascular field for treatments and diagnostics. Revolutionary new therapies for heart attack, stroke and heart failure are emerging, and with them comes a burgeoning demand for rapid, easy-to-use diagnostics. The rewards are great for new products that offer diagnosis in minutes rather than hours.

Simultaneous with this trend, research has uncovered a variety of markers in blood that can be used to diagnose acute events in progress, as well as predict clinical outcomes and monitor responses to therapy. Some of these -- such as creatine kinase-MB, myoglobin and troponin I for heart attack -- have recently reached the market. The technology underlying these tests is now being simplified, with several companies launching point-of-care panels that assay all three of these markers at once. A variety of products targeting other markers are set to emerge from the R&D pipeline. And the genomics revolution promises to uncover the genetic factors that put some people at increased risk for cardiovascular diseases, allowing them to receive preventive treatments while they are still healthy.

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