From CardiovascularBusiness:
“For decades, paramedics, emergency departments, and cardiology teams have coexisted, but we have only recently recognized how important it is to coordinate all three into one seamless unit that delivers rapid primary percutaneous coronary intervention and restores blood flow in a blocked coronary.” That’s according to Ivan Rokos, MD, of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Rokos and his colleagues are the authors of a new study on specialized regional networks’ reperfusion times for patients with acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) in a variety of different geographical regions. The study found that most networks were able to provide door-to-balloon times of 90 minutes or less. “As this study shows,” says Rokos, “paramedics can diagnose STEMI heart attacks quickly and can trigger the activation of an entire system, which allows patients to enter a virtual express lane to the cath lab team at the nearest STEMI hospital.”
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