By Nell Smith
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
Copyright 2006 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is testing a new system that officials hope will allow doctors to know what’s happening inside a chest-pain patient’s heart before the patient arrives at the hospital.
New technology will give ambulance paramedics the ability to wirelessly send to hospital physicians information on the patient’s heart condition. That gives the hospital time to call in needed staff and prepare the catheterization laboratory - where clogged vessels can be cleared - if the patient is having a heart attack. Ultimately, UAMS hopes to reduce the overall time a patient suffers from vessel blockages and inadequate blood flow.
“Each minute we waste, there’s more [heart] muscle that’s going to die,” said Dr. Ibrahim Fahdi, the cardiologist leading the program.
The CALL system - Cardiac Action Life Link - is a joint effort between UAMS, the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System and Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services, which provides ambulance service in Pulaski County. Verizon Wireless is donating the doctors’ equipment and the wireless phones for the ambulances.
UAMS and MEMS officials said this was the first time that an Arkansas hospital and an emergency medical service have used this type of technology.
MEMS has already purchased $600,000 worth of upgraded equipment to support the program, but Jon Swanson, MEMS executive director, said little that paramedics do will change. What is different is that now they can transmit the patient’s electrocardiogram - which measures the heart’s electrical activity - wirelessly to hospital staff. Doctors receive the information on a hand-held device slightly larger than a cell phone.
Because MEMS, which serves all central Arkansas hospitals, is equipped with the technology, other area hospitals could choose to participate. UAMS plans to study whether the system can significantly reduce the time between the onset of chest pain and the initiation of treatment at the hospital.
In a 2005 study published in the Journal of Electrocardiology, North Carolina doctors reported getting patients to the catheterization lab quicker, beating national standards by more than an hour.
The time between getting to the hospital and actually receiving treatment ranged from 27 to 35 minutes, according to a UAMS news release.
The study, however, only examined the care of five patients.
UAMS and MEMS hope the system will benefit Arkansas patients.
“We’re doing this clinical trial on a limited basis simply to make certain that this process does work as we believe it will,” Swanson said.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services publicly reports how frequently individual hospitals meet national standards for quick heart attack treatment.
However, it notes that UAMS does not treat enough heart attack patients to give a valid assessment of how frequently it provides blockage clearing treatment within two hours.
About 1.2 million Americans suffer a heart attack each year. In 2003 in Arkansas, there were about 258 deaths from heart disease per 100,000 population, compared with a national rate of 232.