D2B time decreases for heart attack patients
Millions of people in the U.S. buy Lipitor to reduce their risk of experiencing a heart attack.
Millions of people in the U.S. buy Lipitor to reduce their risk of experiencing a heart attack. These adverse cardiovascular events can be both dangerous and expensive, requiring some patients to undergo a procedure known as angioplasty. According to a report from the Yale University School of Medicine, almost all individuals who have this emergency operation receive it 90 minutes after being admitted to the hospital, a significant improvement over figures from 2006.
Lead author Harlan M. Krumholz and colleagues published their paper in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, reporting that the door-to-balloon time (D2B) - or the period between a patient's arrival at the hospital and angioplasty - should be as short as possible, especially for people who have ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction.
The researchers acquired information from a national database compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
An estimated 91 percent of individuals were treated in a D2B time of less than 90 minutes in 2010, compared to 44 percent in 2005.
"Many said that this level of improvement was impossible to achieve," Krumholz said. "This is an opportunity to reflect on our achievement and to recognize that, when we identify quality issues and problems in our healthcare system, we can work as a community to generate new knowledge, apply it to practice and improve care for patients."
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