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Fast Heart Attack Care at ER Chest Pain Centers

Hospital ECPCs Provide Rapid, Lifesaving Angioplasty

Jul 18, 2009 Jennifer Carroll

Emergency chest pain centers can assess chest pain and open blocked heart arteries quickly, saving lives and increasing the chances of returning to an active lifestyle.

Before chest pain strikes, it's important to consider the advantages of treatment at an accredited emergency chest pain center (ECPC) – capable of delivering the most rapid heart attack care available today.

Coronary heart disease (CHD), as reported by the American Heart Association, remains the leading killer in the U.S., often producing chest pain and heart attacks. This year about 785,000 Americans will have a new heart attack and about 470,000 will have a recurrent attack.

During a heart attack, the heart's blood supply is interrupted, damaging heart muscle. Emergency balloon angioplasty (or cardiac catheterization) is a best-odds intervention because it

Rapidly restores blood flow to the heart;
Saves lives; and
Improves a patient's chance of returning to an active lifestyle.

The American College of Cardiology has set a goal of getting 75 percent of major heart attack victims to catheterization within 90 minutes of hospital arrival. ECPCs, which usually operate within a hospital's emergency department (ED), have demonstrated the ability to appropriately deliver angioplasty within minutes of a heart attack victim’s ED arrival any time of the day or night with consistently good outcomes.

Emergency Chest Pain Centers Divide Patients into Treatment Groups

According to Attacking Heart Issues: Accreditation can boost outcomes for patients presenting to ED by Robert Weisenburger Lipetz, MBA, quickly determining the cause of chest pain improves patient care and ED efficiency and helps ensure a patient is not sent home too early or needlessly admitted.

An ECPC's experienced team of emergency physicians, interventional cardiologists, nurses and technicians assesses patients and places them into one of four treatment groups:

Patients experiencing a heart attack;
Patients that may be experiencing a heart attack but the signs are not clear;
Patients that may be suffering from angina (chest pain or discomfort that occurs when the heart isn’t getting enough blood); and
Patients with symptoms that are not heart-related.

Depending on the reason for chest pain, the team then delivers appropriate treatment without delay.

Canton, Ohio-based Mercy Medical Center has the nation's first accredited ECPC. A list of all accredited ECPCs is available on the Society of Chest Pain Centers' Web site.

CDC and American Heart Association Report Decrease in CHD Mortality

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that CHD death rates have decreased by 25.8 percent since 1999, indicating the American Heart Association's (AHA) 2010 strategic goal to reduce CHD deaths has been achieved sooner than expected. In an AHA news release last year, the organization's past president Dan Jones, M.D., notes that many factors have contributed to the reduction in deaths, including rapid angioplasty.

"We know that getting patients to the hospital quickly for the appropriate treatment is crucial to saving lives. We know that timely angioplasty to open blocked coronary arteries, or thrombolysis when primary angioplasty is not available or appropriate, is making a difference," says Jones.

Heart Attack Symptoms May Not Feel Like Pain or Occur in the Chest

Chest pain does not necessarily signal a heart attack but requires immediate medical attention.

Women's heart attack symptoms can differ from men's. In addition, a heart attack may cause various types of discomfort that may not be perceived as pain and are not necessarily in the chest. The discomfort may:

Feel like indigestion;
Be felt in the chest, the inner arm (especially the left arm), the jaw or teeth, or other parts of the body;
Get worse with activity and subside with rest;
Not be in a specific spot;
Come and go and increase over time with each new pain recurring sooner, lasting longer and feeling worse; and
Be accompanied by sweating, shortness of breath or flu-like symptoms.

The copyright of the article Fast Heart Attack Care at ER Chest Pain Centers in General Medicine is owned by Jennifer Carroll. Permission to republish Fast Heart Attack Care at ER Chest Pain Centers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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