Researchers matched North Carolina’s emergency medical services records from June 2008 to September 2010 to a clinical registry of patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. Sixty-three percent of STEMI patients went directly to a PCI-capable hospital and 37 percent first went to a non-PCI hospital and were later transferred for a PCI procedure.
Results showed that patients in the first group received PCI or clot-busting drugs in an average of 93 minutes from first medical contact. The second group — in which patients were first sent to a non-PCI hospital — received treatment in an average of 124 minutes. Similarly, the time from FMC to PCI averaged 93 minutes for the PCI-capable group and 161 minutes for the non-PCI hospital group.
Overall, patients who went directly to a PCI-capable hospital were nearly three times as likely to receive treatment within guideline recommendations as were patients who had to be transferred for care.
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