Holland Hospital has set a new record for our best door-to-balloon time for treating heart attack patients: 25 minutes!
“Door-to-balloon” refers to the time from when a heart attack patient enters our doors to when blood flow to the heart is restored by performing a minimally invasive procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI.
According to Todd Knight, Director of Invasive/Interventional Procedures and the Catheterization Laboratory, Holland Hospital has established clear protocols in line with best practice to follow when a Code Z–AMI (acute myocardial infarction) is called—and even before. It all begins with a “heads up” phone call from AMR (American Medical Response ambulance) personnel that a heart attack patient is on the way. By the time the ambulance arrives, the patient can already be registered and chest pain team members mobilized.
Knight described how these processes fell smoothly into place when the Emergency Department got the call from AMR on February 21, 2013.
“The ED immediately activated the Cath Lab team, and they used the valuable time during the patient's pre-hospital transport to get the Cath Lab and personnel ready for an emergent PCI,” Knight said.
Because they had already paged the on-call interventional cardiologist, Greg Bernath, MD, met the patient when he arrived in the ED and immediately confirmed that he was a PCI candidate.
“ED and Cath Lab staff worked together to get the patient prepped and transferred to the Cath Lab in a record 8 minutes. Then it took just 17 minutes for Dr. Bernath and team to insert a catheter, identify the culprit lesion, and perform intervention to restore blood flow to the patient's heart,” Knight said.
Our median PCI treatment time for 2013 so far is 45 minutes—half the goal of 90 minutes set by the American College of Cardiology, and lower than recent state and national medians.
“Twenty-five minutes door-to-balloon time for a PCI patient beats the benchmarks and our own best time,” Knight said. “This again confirms that the processes we’ve put in place to treat heart attacks work efficiently and effectively. People in our community can count on Holland Hospital to provide optimal care in the event of a heart attack.”