When Emergency Physicians Make the Call, Patients Get Fast Heart Attack Treatment

INDIANAPOLIS, June 14 -- Authorizing emergency department physicians to send ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients directly to the cath lab, resulted in 71% being treated within 90 minutes of symptom onset.

The simple change in protocol that allowed the emergency department team to make the call rather than waiting for approval from a cardiologist combined with a crew trained to transfer the patient to an immediately available cath lab reduced median door-to-balloon time by 38 minutes (P