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A Hearty Life

Reducing Time Between Heart Attack and Angioplasty

by Hsien-Hsien Lei, PhD on November 13th, 2006

After a heart attack, how quickly are you able to receive treatment? Best case scenario is for patients to receive a balloon angioplasty within 90 minutes of arriving at the hospital. Angioplasty helps to reopen clogged arteries and if performed in a timely fashion, can reduce the risk of death by 40%.

Yale cardiologist, Dr. Harlan Krumholz:

You’ve had a heart attack. You’ve rushed to the hospital, and now you’re waiting for a procedure to open the blockage. Most Americans wait two hours or more. And every minute you wait, your heart is being deprived of oxygen.


In a national campaign to help hospitals care for heart attack patients, researchers recommend the following for reducing “door-to-balloon” time.

  • Emergency medicine physicians should activate the catheterization laboratory (minus 8.2 minutes)
  • The Central page operator should activate the laboratory (minus 13.8 minutes)
  • The emergency department should activate the cath lab while the patient is en route to the hospital (minus 15.4 minutes)
  • Staff should arrive in the cath lab within 20 minutes after being paged (minus 19.3 minutes)
  • There should always be an attending cardiologist on site (minus 14.6 minutes)
  • Staff in the emergency department and the cath lab should get per-case feedback (minus 8.6 minutes)

If you’d like to learn more about your hospital’s performance, see the United States Department of Health & Human Services Hospital Compare.

USA Today, November 12, 2006
New England Journal of Medicine, November 13, 2006

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1 opinion for Reducing Time Between Heart Attack and Angioplasty

  • A Hearty Life » Angioplasty Isn’t Always a Good Thing
    Nov 15, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    [...] Earlier this week, I wrote about a new initiative that will encourage hospitals to develop procedures to speed up angioplasties for patients who’ve experienced a myocardial infarction aka heart attack. Reducing the time between heart attack and angioplasty–less than 90 minutes after arriving at the hospital is ideal–is even more important in light of this recent study presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association. [...]

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