Middletown has received the AHA’s Mission: Lifeline EMS Silver Award, while Monroe received a Lifeline EMS Bronze Award for their efforts to implement quality improvement measures for the treatment of patients who experience severe heart attacks.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA) about 790,000 people in the US have heart attacks each year. Of those, about 114,000 will die.
The estimated annual incidence of heart attack in the US is 580,000 new attacks and 210,000 recurrent attacks. The Average age at the first heart attack is 65.3 years for males and 71.8 years for females.
Atrium’s Chest Pain Center Coordinator Kim Crout, said the awards bestowed on the local EMS teams recognize each for their efforts to work with the hospital to implement quality improvement measures for the treatment of patients who experience severe heart attacks.
“Both entities work close with Atrium and we really work hand-in-hand to help patients,” she said.
She said Atrium was accredited in November as a full Chest Pain Center from the American College of Cardiology and that has helped train EMS responders on how to reduce time for treatment during the early stages of a heart attack.
Dr. Ralph Talkers, medical director for Atrium’s Emergency Trauma Center and for Middletown EMS, said that the hospital has educated paramedics about using technology to help save lives.
Talkers explained that response time to a heart attack is critical and that is why both Middletown and Monroe departments have ambulances outfitted with EKG equipment to transmit information about the heart’s electrical activity in route.
“We recently had in the hospital a man that came in with a massive heart attack. We knew it was a critical artery we could tell by just looking at the EKG,” Talkers said. “We fortunately got him to the catheterization lab very quickly and he survived. He was actually resuscitated in the field. Symptoms are very critical in saving lives.”
Those symptoms Talkers explained include: nausea, chest pressure heaviness, shortness of breath, arms and jaw aching.
“I think it is very important that patients have to realize that they should not minimize symptoms. I can tell you from personal experience I have had family members at a relatively young age who unfortunately succumbed from heart attack symptoms,” he said. “They didn’t realize that they were having pain that was related to a heart attach and were thinking that their nausea and vomiting was caused by a virus.”
Crout said women need to understand that they may have different symptoms.
“It is critical for women to realize that they don’t always have chest pain. They typically have more of the back pain or severe exhaustion or shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting,” Crout said. “Their symptoms are a little bit different. But we cannot wait on the symptoms – the general public needs to understand the signs of symptoms of a heart attack and call 911 immediately.”
She added that 85 percent of damage to the heart occurs within the first two hours of a heart attack.
“So if we can open up that vessel very quickly we can decrease their chance of death and maintain their quality of life,” Crout said.
Talker said that the collaboration with local EMS departments, staff and the various trauma and cardiology departments has been a “wonderful process,” that has improved the opportunity to save lives of people suffering from a heart attack.
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