Over 6 million people visited emergency rooms across the United States last year with possible symptoms of heart disease.

Five years ago after noticing symptoms that could be related to heart problems, Jack Stewart's wife encouraged him to go through a cardiac diagnostic test. "It saved my life. If you've got a wife as good as my wife, it makes you live longer."

Emergency Room Medical Director Dr. Larry Hobbs says a recent innovation called "cardiac bio markers" is now being utilized in local emergency rooms. "It's actually a blood test that measures certain enzymes that are released in the blood system when there's damage to the muscle, specifically heart muscle."

Dr. Hobbs also says that the benefit of this type of test could literally be life saving for the 4% of ER patients who are sent home with undetected severe coronary artery disease. "A bedside test for cardiac markers to be rapidly obtained in order to give us a better idea of a patients condition and whether the chest pain is due to cardiac disease or not."

Because of his personal experience, Jack is fully behind the new cardiac marker-screening test. "Any type of test that they come up with that could be beneficial to saving your life is an important thing that everyone should look into."

The results of this test is available in a matter of minutes, giving doctors one more tool in their fight to save lives from heart disease.

This blood test can be done and read right at the patients' bedside.