ACC Targets STEMI Times with Emergency CV Care 2007
The American College of Cardiology last week launched a groundbreaking educational program designed to help attendees build regional STEMI “trauma” systems that will shorten door-to-balloon times and ultimately save patient lives.
Emergency CV Care 2007: Strategies for Building Regional Integrated STEMI Systems for Reperfusion took place June 1 – 2 in Washington, D.C. More than 200 paramedics, nurses, emergency department physicians and cardiologists from around the country were in attendance.
This program built on the College’s D2B: An Alliance for Quality initiative, which offers hospitals evidence-based strategies and tools for reducing door-to-balloon times to 90 minutes or less. More than 900 hospitals participate in the D2B initiative, which is part of a worldwide effort to reduce STEMI treatment times in keeping with evidence-based guidelines. ACC’s efforts to build regional approaches to STEMI care are complementary to the American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline initiative and other emerging solutions to remove barriers to care.
Three times as many Americans die from myocardial infarction as from motor vehicle accidents. Proper treatment within the first hour is critical to surviving both heart attacks and trauma, but most regions of the United States lack the coordinated response for heart attack patients that exist for trauma victims. Patients who might otherwise receive lifesaving reperfusion therapy face systematic barriers to care.
Participants in Emergency CV Care 2007 reviewed programs from around the country that have improved speed and organization of care, including initial results from the RACE program in North Carolina. Reperfusion of Acute MI in Carolina Emergency Departments was organized by James Jollis, M.D., F.A.C.C., and Christopher Granger, M.D., F.A.C.C., and resulted in substantially faster treatment of heart attacks. Over 70 percent of patients at angioplasty centers received angioplasty within 90 minutes of arriving at the hospital, a 20 percent improvement.
“This project has been the most extensive program in the U.S. to advance the care of heart attack patients by organizing ambulances, emergency departments and hospitals to provide the best treatments,” said Dr. Jollis. “And in North Carolina, it enabled us to substantially accelerate the treatment of heart attacks to improve survival.”
Dr. Granger and Dr. Jollis led an expert faculty during this two-day program as they helped participants lay the foundation for regional, integrated STEMI systems that save time and save lives. For more information on Emergency CV Care, click here. | 
