The article is interesting for a few reasons. It includes a time line, one that does not omit the EMS times. That is what I am going to focus on.
There are a few important questions from the time line.
8:31 EMS is dispatched.
8:34 EMS meets him at his front door. It should only take a couple of minutes to get to the ambulance and start transporting while assessing and treating. A 3 minute response time is good.
8:42 He is wheeled into the ambulance. 8 minutes later. It only took 3 minutes to “hop into an ambulance for the half-mile trip to Rosen’s house moments after his 911 call.“
8:50 The ambulance is en route and notifying the ED of a STEMI. Why not notify when the first 12 lead was done, if the goal is to reduce delays? Although in this case it does not seem to have mattered, not all hospitals will respond as quickly. Yet, another 8 minutes apparently on scene.
8:57 Arrival at the ED.
9:01 Wheeled through ED doors. It took 4 minutes to get from the ambulance to the ED doors? It took less time to drive to the residence and meet the patient at the front door.
Interesting that the only ED contact mentioned is on the radio. The 12 lead ECGs are handed to a cardiology fellow, who works in the cath lab. They go straight through the ED to the cath lab, without stopping. Is there any improvement to the care of the patient that might be contributed by stopping in the ED? No.
The rest of the time line is in the story, but does not relate to EMS as much.
They are referring to the interior of the ambulance as the ambulance bay, not the area at the ED where ambulances park. A 2nd 12 lead is nice, but all of this can be done en route – including IVs and drugs. 12 leads can be done while moving. Shaving the chest, if necessary for application of leads, can be done with an electric razor while moving. Using benzoin makes a big difference in getting leads to stick, which can otherwise cause a lot of delays in obtaining a readable 12 lead.
The description of treatment suggests that this was an RVI (Right Ventricular Infarction), since no NTG (NiTroGlycerin in the US, or GTN – Glyceryl TriNitrate elsewhere) was given, but fluids were given (perhaps I am just reading too much into it). There is not much reason to sit on scene for this stuff. Things that do matter are access to the front door of the residence with the stretcher. Was this a reason for delay? Why morphine, when fentanyl is a safer drug – especially with RVI?
If “Kevin and I recognized his heart attack immediately,” why does it take so long to get going?
A study in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology looked at the best practices for improving door to balloon times.
No need for telemetry to further delay patient treatment.
Looking at the times:
8:31 response, 8:34 patient contact at front door, 8:42 in ambulance, 8:50 en route with STEMI notification by radio, 8:57 at ED, 9:01 rolling through ED doors and by-passing the ED.
8 minutes from the patient’s door to the ambulance. He met EMS at the door.
8 minutes from entering the ambulance until en route (not sure if I am reading this correctly).
4 minutes from the ambulance arrival at the ED to the ED doors.
There are 20 minutes that could not be completely eliminated, but should be dramatically reduced.
The time from door to balloon is less than the amount of the apparently avoidable EMS delays.
I realize that this article may not be accurate, that these times can never be completely eliminated, that I am reading a bit into this article, but WTF?
Historically, almost all of the unnecessary delays have been in the hospital. Here, it is the hospital that seems to have its act together. Ideal timing does seem to be one thing working in the favor of this patient. He arrived at 9 AM on a week day. The cath lab may have been preparing to take their first scheduled, non-emergency patient of the day and just had to defer that case for a while.
The cardiology fellow is waiting in the ED for the patient. There is little reason for the ED to be involved in the care of this patient. Look at the amount of time saved by the EMS notification of a cath lab patient and by the cath lab staff coming to the ED to take the patient directly to the cath lab.
Let’s add in the 4 minutes that the ambulance was at the ED, but not yet through the doors – 18 minutes door to balloon.
Just to complicate things we can put some butter on the fingers of Dr. Shah, who took just 6 minutes from initiating femoral access to inflating the balloon. How about adding 30 minutes – adding 5 times as long as it actually took. This would still give a door to balloon time of 48 minutes. The AHA and JCAHO goal is less than 90 minutes. This is just a smidge more than half of that goal.
If we can by-pass the ED, difficult if the cath lab team is not in the hospital, the amount of time saved is tremendous. This is not a criticism of the ED – we do the same thing with trauma. The cath lab team needs to be prepared to take the patient right away.
Bradley EH, Roumanis SA, Radford MJ, Webster TR, McNamara RL, Mattera JA, Barton BA, Berg DN, Portnay EL, Moscovitz H, Parkosewich J, Holmboe ES, Blaney M, Krumholz HM.
Achieving door-to-balloon times that meet quality guidelines: how do successful hospitals do it?
J Am Coll Cardiol. 2005 Oct 4;46(7):1236-41.
PMID: 16198837 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
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