Monitoring acute coronary syndrome using national hospital data: an information paper on trends and issues

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) refers to the spectrum of acute coronary artery diseases spanning acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and unstable angina (UA). They are sudden, severe and life-threatening events. This report reviews the current algorithm for monitoring the incidence of ACS in Australia, presenting a detailed analysis of hospitalisations for AMI and UA. It also presents a range of alternative algorithms for the estimation of ACS incidence. Further work is required to validate these algorithms.