Doctors want short 'door to balloon' times

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Sept. 29 (UPI) -- An in-depth medical study in New Haven, Conn., has determined what steps are necessary to provide rapid angioplasty treatment for heart attack patients.

"Time-to-treatment is important," writes Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Yale University School of Medicine. "The effectiveness of angioplasty in the treatment of heart attacks is highly dependent on the timeliness of therapy.

American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines say hospitals equipped to perform emergency angioplasty procedures should try to reopen blocked blood vessels of heart attack patients within 90 minutes of a patient's arrival.

The study's authors produced a flow chart outlining steps successful hospitals take to meet a "door-to-balloon" time standard. Those steps include providing equipment and training so ambulance crews can perform electrocardiograms in the field and then using those "pre-hospital" ECGs to activate angioplasty teams

The study also recommends allowing emergency medicine physicians make the activation call without waiting for a cardiologist to confirm a heart attack diagnosis.

The study appears in the Oct. 4 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.