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April 10, 2007

Speedy treatment of heart attacks

This Gina Kolada/NY Times article examines one of the most underappreciated aspects of treating heart attack victims -- the importance of speedy treatment:

Studies reveal, for example, that people have only about an hour to get their arteries open during a heart attack if they are to avoid permanent heart damage. Yet, recent surveys find, fewer than 10 percent get to a hospital that fast, sometimes because they are reluctant to acknowledge what is happening. And most who reach the hospital quickly do not receive the optimal treatment — many American hospitals are not fully equipped to provide it . . . [. . .]

What few patients realize . . . is that a serious heart attack is as much of an emergency as being shot.

“We deal with it as if it is a gunshot wound to the heart,” Dr. [Elliott] Antman [director of the coronary care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital] said.

Cardiologists call it the golden hour, that window of time when they have a chance to save most of the heart muscle when an artery is blocked.

But that urgency, cardiologists say, has been one of the most difficult messages to get across, in part because people often deny or fail to appreciate the symptoms of a heart attack. The popular image of a heart attack is all wrong. [. . .]

[M]ost people — often hoping it is not a heart attack, wondering if their symptoms will fade, not wanting to be alarmist — hesitate far too long before calling for help.

“The single biggest delay is from the onset of symptoms and calling 911,” said Dr. Bernard Gersh, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic. “The average time is 111 minutes, and it hasn’t changed in 10 years.”

Read the entire article, which is a good overview of the early warning signs to look for in diagnosing a heart attack. Heck, even this cool customer is at elevated risk of having one.

Posted by Tom at April 10, 2007 4:36 AM

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