FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. -- A new protocol used to transfer heart attack patients via helicopter from the General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital has safely and significantly reduced overall patient transfer time via helicopter.
Called "STEMI-hot load," (segment elevation myocardial infarction) the practice gets heart attack patients to a facility capable of performing cardiac catheterization 68 percent faster.
GLWACH's STEMI-hot load protocol is activated upon confirmation via electrocardiogram that a patient is having a heart attack.
The protocol includes many processes and focuses on:
-- contacting an appropriate facility to accept and treat the patient
-- administering medication requested by the accepting facility
-- contacting and meeting helicopter flight services personnel at the landing pad, reporting, and transferring care of the patient right at the loading site
Because the closest facility capable of performing cardiac catheterization can be in excess of 30 minutes flight time, GLWACH's focus must be on initial recognition, minimizing time, and expediting transfer.
The American Heart Association recommends no more than 120 minutes from the time of first patient contact to the time the patient is stented.
This leaves a narrow window for emergent care and preparation for surgical intervention in this rural setting. Every minute saved is a minute of heart muscle saved--and this new protocol saves 19 minutes of heart muscle.
Individuals have been educated on how to take better care of the heart, said Randall Moore, Supervisory nurse, Emergency Medicine. However, Ischemic Heart Disease, which is a reduced blood supply to the heart, was still the leading cause of death from 2000-2012 according to the World Health Organization.
Moore said that, in recent years, the overall focus has been placed on prevention, but the important of treatments cannot be forgotten.
Current treatments range from life style modification and medication management to surgery including percutaneous coronary intervention, more widely known as cardiac catheterization or "stent placement."
This is a procedure where a small catheter is introduced into the groin or wrist and fed up to the coronary arteries, which are the "blood vessels of the heart." If a blockage is found then a stent (small mesh tube) is placed to allow proper blood flow.
Untreated, these blockages can lead to a myocardial infarction, commonly known as a "heart attack".
A heart attack is damage to the heart muscle because oxygenated blood cannot reach the tissue, of which the heart is composed. That damage can be localized to a specific area or throughout the body. The extent of damage to the heart muscle determines the severity. The heart damage can lead to several debilitating diagnosis, the most severe being death.
Story by The Guidon and General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital Staff
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