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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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How
Fast Can One Get Angioplasty Done in Singapore? As we know, whether a person who suffers stroke and heart attack will survive depends greatly on how fast he or she can get the appropriate medical treatment. Peter (not his real name), who resides in Singapore, recalled he had to wait 10 days for an angioplasty after he had his first heart attack in August 2001. But in November 2007, when he suffered a second heart attack, he managed to get the angioplasty done within an hour or so. Angioplasty is a procedure by which doctors thread a flexible tube through the arteries to the blocked area, and inflate a balloon on the tube to clear the blockage. Back in 2001, the standard treatment for a heart attack was to give the patient clot-busting drugs first. It would then be followed by an angioplasty, only when the doctors felt necessary.
The present practice, however, is to clear the blockage as fast as possible as doctors believe this would greatly improve a patient’s chances of survival. National University Hospital (NUH), for example, has brought the median time taken to send a victim of heart attack from the hospital doors onto the operating table and complete an angioplasty, from 103 minutes in 2006 to just 68 minutes in 2007. Such reduction of median ‘door-to-balloon time’ has actually cut the risk of death by 7.5 percent. The new timing is better than the recommended international standard of below 90 minutes, which only a handful of medical institutions around the world can manage to achieve consistently. For instance, in the United States, one third of patients get the emergency procedure done below 90 minutes, and the median time taken is 100 minutes. The old practice would require the emergency doctors to call the cardiac registrar on duty if they suspected that a patient was having a heart attack. The registrar would then examine the patient and discuss his findings with the cardiac consultant on call. Only if the consultant felt it was necessary to go ahead, the emergency angioplasty team would be activated. The team members would then rush to the operating suite, usually from their homes if in the middle of the night. The current practice allows the emergency doctors to decide whether a patient requires an angioplasty, and they are authorized to alert both an angioplasty team member and the registrar. A nurse from the emergency department will take the patient to the operating suite and monitors him or her with the registrar until the angioplasty team arrives. Previously, patient would be taken to the operating suite only when the team had arrived. Other hospitals and medical institutions in Singapore also strive to improve their work flow. The National Heart Centre has brought down its median ‘door-to-balloon time’ from 106 minutes in 2006 to 80 minutes in 2007. Emergency doctors from Singapore General Hospital (SGH) call a telephone operator, who will activate the centre's emergency angioplasty team through mass text messages. They also began a trial project that required paramedics in ambulance to transmit the patient’s ECGs (record the heart’s electrical activity and can indicate a heart attack) to SGH emergency doctors for their interpretation. If the patient is having a heart attack, the doctors will immediately activate the emergency angioplasty team.
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