Syncope
American College of Physicians for
Diagnosing
Syncope
Syncope is a transient loss of consciousness that is accompanied by loss
of postural tone. It is common and can be dangerous, disabling , and difficult
to diagnose. Thousands of dollars can be spent evaluating a patient with syncope,
only to result in a series of negative test results and a patient who continues
to faint. Because the range of prognoses in syncope is wide, the physician's
principal initial task is to distinguish between benign and life-threatening
causes of syncope. We intend primarily to help clinicians maximize the diagnostic
yield in the workup of syncope. Our secondary purpose is to summarize the
literature that will aid clinicians in assessing risk to enable them to target
hospitalization and invasive testing for the patient with syncope who is at
high risk for an adverse outcome. The questions addressed by this two-part
study are 1) Which diagnostic techniques are the most valuable for patients
with syncope? 2) How can the clinical history help focus the workup for patients
with syncope? and 3) When should patients with syncope be hospitalized?
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