Saving Time, Saving Lives

Nov.13, 2006 — -- An estimated 1,000 lives could be saved each year if hospitals could treat heart attack patients a bit more quickly.

Starting today, hundreds of hospitals across the country have pledged to step up and speed up.

Hospitals are joining an ambitious nationwide effort to give faster emergency room care to patients during and immediately after a heart attack.

The campaign, announced by the two large heart groups, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, seeks to get hospitals to speed up what is called "door to balloon time" (D2B) -- the time it takes from when the patient arrives at the emergency room to the time the patient has their blocked artery opened with an angioplasty balloon.

The campaign, the D2B Alliance, was announced at an American Heart Association meeting in Chicago. The doctors who launched it expect to see life-saving results within months.

Most heart attack patients do not get to a hospital quickly enough. But even when they do, precious minutes are often wasted.

"Every hospital in the country, virtually, has this problem," says Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.

"That is, they haven't specifically codified how they're going to treat the patients who come in with a heart attack and make it seamless so that they're treated in rapid fashion."

Heart attack patients should be treated within 90 minutes of arriving at a hospital, or the risk of dying increases dramatically. But studies show that two-thirds of heart attack patients end up waiting longer.

The problem isn't in the emergency room. If a patient arrives at almost any hospital complaining of severe chest pain, doctors will come running. What takes time is getting the actual treatment, which for most patients is angioplasty.

Experts seem to know what the problem is. So, why hasn't anybody fixed it?

One expert, Dr. Steve Nissen, president of the American College of Cardiology, puts it bluntly: "Many hospitals in America don't know what they are doing."