Update on the Universal Definition of Acute Myocardial Infarction in the Light of New Data

At the 2012 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Conference in Munich, the updated Universal Definition of myocardial infarction was presented for the first time and was then published simultaneously in five medical journals (European Heart Journal, Circulation, Journal of American College of Cardiology, Nature Reviews Cardiology, Global Heart). Major changes in this updated version include the differentiation between myocardial ischemia and myocardial injury, which gives credit to the relatively large number of patients with troponin positive test results, especially when measured with high sensitivity assays, in patients without myocardial ischemia. Another important topic is the revised criteria for the diagnoses of acute myocardial ischemia related to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and coronary arterial bypass grafting (CABG).