I ran across this article from Medical News Today. Apparently a hospital in Indiana has found a way to increase response time in treating ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (a type of heart attack in which an artery is completely blocked). The common treatment for STEMI is an emergency angioplasty, but how successful it is depends a lot on how fast it gets done.
So this hospital came up with two key changes to speed up the process that seem to be working: instead of having to wait on activating the cath lab until a cardiologist comes to the ER to examine the patient, the ER physician can now activate the cath lab without waiting for the go-ahead from the cardiologist. (Sounds like a simple idea, but just consider how difficult it is to break away from "traditional" protocol in the ER.) The other change was to put in place an in-house "Emergency Heart Attack Response Team", to set up the cath lab almost as soon as the physician activates it.
This is a fantastic idea, and I have no doubt it'll catch on with other hospitals--the sooner the better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment