Heart attack patients treated off-hours do as well

The chances of surviving an emergency heart attack procedure may be just as good whether you're treated on a weekday, weekend or at night, a new study suggests.

The findings come from one large UK hospital. But researchers say the results could extend to similar medical centers, too.

The study, reported in the European Heart Journal, looked at records from 2,571 patients treated for a more serious type of heart attack known as a ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI. Those account for about one-fifth of all heart attacks.

The best treatment for STEMI is emergency angioplasty, where a balloon-tipped catheter is threaded into the arteries to push aside the blockage causing the heart attack. Often, a tiny, scaffold-like device called a stent is left behind to keep the artery open.

One question has been whether STEMI patients who land in the hospital at night or on weekends might fare worse than those who arrive during "business hours." That's a possibility because during off-hours, senior staff would likely be on call rather than at the hospital.

In this study, though, patients who had an angioplasty during off-hours were no more likely to die in the hospital: 4.6 percent of them did, versus 4.3 percent of patients treated on a weekday between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Their longer-term outlook was also similar. Over the next year and a half, 11 percent died, compared with 12 percent of patients treated during weekday hours.

What should you do if someone has a heart attack?

A heart attack will cause severe chest pains behind the breast bone, often radiating towards the left arm.

If someone has a cardiac arrest or heart attack, there may be only a few minutes to act before it is too late. It is vital to know what to do beforehand.

To perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and artificial respiration (mouth-to-mouth resuscitation) effectively, training and frequent practice on resuscitation dummies are essential.

First aid courses are offered all over the country at night schools or by voluntary organisations such as St John Ambulance or British Red Cross.

We highly recommend that you do one of these courses. They are fun, and it's only by learning what to do in the calm environment of a course that you can reliably deliver care in the highly charged situation of a cardiac arrest.

The study was done in a large hospital that does a lot of cardiac procedures, said Dr. Mohaned Egred of Freeman Hospital and Newcastle University, the senior researcher on the work.

He thinks the results could be similar at other big medical centers with experienced staff and a "robust efficient activation system" that gets STEMI patients into treatment quickly.