By Sang Lee
Pasadena Star-News (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Los Angeles Newspaper Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles County supervisors approved funding Tuesday to provide paramedics with advanced heart-monitoring devices that experts said could save hundreds of lives.
The portable 12-lead electrocardiograph machines can check the severity of a cardiac arrest on-site and diagnose if it was a result of an ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction, which is a type of an acute heart attack.
So-called STEMI heart attacks are those that cause muscle damage and the American Heart Association recommends they be treated within 90 minutes of identification.
Up to $4 million of the county’s Measure B trauma care funds will be distributed to county and city paramedics for training specifically related to 12-lead EKG technologies and the purchasing and maintaining of the machines.
The program also will include a review of county hospitals to ensure that they are qualified as standardized STEMI receiving centers. This would require a hospital to have a specialized heart procedure lab with cardiologists.
In 2004, county voters approved an increase of property taxes to supply $175 million for the area’s emergency medical services.
“It’s huge. It’ll save lives and prevent disabilities,” said county Fire Department Medical Director Franklin Pratt.
“This is the biggest breakthrough in this county’s emergency services in nearly 20years, since we applied automatic external defibrillators to our fire trucks.”
Some paramedics from the Los Angeles County and City Fire Departments have been using the machines since last year, thanks to a $3 million private grant from the Annenberg Foundation.
The grant educated nearly 1,500 county and city paramedics in advanced cardiac life support training. With the funds provided by Measure B, the number of trained paramedics will double and more than 200paramedic units will use the 12-lead machines.
Part of the problem was that paramedics would simply transport patients to the nearest hospital without knowledge of the facility’s capabilities.
Of the 650 calls the county will receive per day, about
20 percent are related to cardiac chest pains according to Pratt.
“We’re developing all the criteria to designate hospitals with a procurement of equipment to make sure they fall under county regulations,” said Carol Meyer, the county’s Director of Emergency Medical Services Agency.
With heart attacks being the leading cause of death among adults nationally, 1st District Supervisor Gloria Molina helped put together the recommendation for cardiac-specific hospital care standards and extra equipment.