Heart attack patients as far as 150 miles away from a 24-hour emergency heart care center were able to receive therapy for blocked arteries within or faster than current recommended time frames, as per a research studypublished in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

A heart attack is a true medical emergency, where every 20 to 30 minute delay could impact whether your patient lives or dies, said Henry Ting, M.D., lead author of the study and a heart specialist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who coordinates quality improvement efforts for cardiology services.

Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester is part of the Mayo Clinic. It houses a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week cardiac catheterization lab, which means the facility is fully equipped to handle emergency angioplasty, also known according tocutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), to open blocked coronary arteries in the quickest way possible. Twenty-eight hospitals across three states in the region dont have this capability, so heart attack patients are sent to Saint Marys Hospital for therapy.

Ting and colleagues implemented and reviewed a protocol, called the Fast Track, for patients of Saint Marys Hospital or for those of 28 surrounding hospitals in the region as far as 150 miles away who were transferred to Saint Marys Hospital in a cardiac emergency.

We mapped the processes of care and eliminated redundant steps that added no value from the perspective of the heart attack patient, Ting said. From there, we implemented and reviewed the regional system of care, striving to coordinate and integrate how to deliver the best and fastest reperfusion treatment to open up an occluded coronary artery.

A major heart attack is when a complete blockage occurs in a coronary artery. This is called an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Treatment for STEMI patients includes either emergency angioplasty (a tiny wire is inserted into the blocked artery and a balloon and/or stent is used to re-open the coronary artery) or injection of a clot-busting drug.

American Heart Association guidelines recommend that angioplasty be given within 90 minutes of a patients arrival at the hospital, and clot-busting drug therapy within 30 minutes. The time between hospital arrival and therapy is called door-to-balloon time with angioplasty or door-to-needle time with drugs. A shorter door-to-treatment time increases a patients chance of survival.

The study showed that Mayo Clinic treated 597 consecutive patients from May 2004 to December 2006. There were three groups of study subjects. Group A included 258 patients who arrived at Saint Marys Hospital and were treated with primary angioplasty. Group B was made up of 105 patients who came to a regional hospital more than three hours after their symptoms began and were transferred to Saint Marys Hospital and treated with primary angioplasty. Group C included 131 patients who came to a regional hospital less than three hours after their symptoms began and were treated with a clot-busting drug and then transferred to Saint Marys Hospital.

The Mayos Fast Track STEMI protocol decreased the median door-to-balloon time at Saint Marys Hospital (Group A) from 90 minutes to 71 minutes (21 percent improvement), with 75 percent of patients receiving it in less than 90 minutes. For patients from the regional hospitals (Group B), median door-to-balloon time was 116 minutes including an average 57 minutes for transferring the patient from the regional hospital to Saint Marys Hospital. Twelve percent of Group B patients received angioplasty in less than 90 minutes. Door-to-needle time for patients receiving clot-busting treatment at the regional hospital was 25 minutes, with 70 percent of patients receiving therapy in less than 30 minutes. The Saint Marys Hospital STEMI protocol, adopted in May 2004, includes five strategies:

• All patients with suspected heart attack get a 12-lead electrocardiogram, which a doctor interprets within 10 minutes of their hospital arrival.

• The emergency department staff activates the cardiac catheterization lab without waiting for review or approval by a heart specialist.

• A single-call system activates the entire cardiac catheterization team.

• The catheterization lab is fully operational within 30 minutes of activation.

• Staff collect data using a computerized, Web-based database with feedback provided to staff within 2448 hours.

Staff implemented the regional STEMI protocol in December 2004 at 28 hospitals in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa 12 from the Mayo Health System and 16 independent hospitals. The regional protocol included the five strategies adopted at Saint Marys Hospital, plus an additional five:

• A standardized selection protocol was developed for choosing clot-busting treatment or PCI as primary treatment to restore blood flow to the heart.

• A single phone call system allows receiving heart specialist (at Saint Marys Hospital) and regional doctor to discuss case, activate helicopter transfer and activate the catheterization team.

• A central communication center selected the fastest mode of transfer from three helicopters and ground ambulances, with dispatchers looped into the patient care team.

• The air ambulance transport team developed an innovative hot load procedure helicopter engine is left on and time to pick up a patient from landing to take-off is less than 10 minutes similar to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit.

• Saint Marys Hospital emergency department evaluation was bypassed, with patients delivered straight to the catheterization lab, rather than being re-reviewed by on-site staff.

We did not simply transfer every heart attack patient for angioplasty, Ting said. We wanted to organize a system of care that would deliver the best appropriate treatment as per guidelines to get the right patient to the right hospital with the right therapy.


Posted by: Emily    Source

---