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Acting quickly to save hearts and lives.
The ability of Emergency Medical Services and hospitals to quickly identify and treat a heart attack is critical to saving lives. Both the Cape & Islands EMS and the Emergency Rooms at Falmouth Hospital and Cape Cod Hospital are up to this crucial task. Their goal is to have the best possible technology and procedures in place and to work together, quickly and efficiently to beat the clock on the critical door-to-balloon time (the duration of time between the moment a heart attack patient enters the emergency room door until he or she receives an emergency angioplasty .)

“There has been a dramatic change in the years that I have been working with EMS here,” said Leonard Nelson, Director of Cape & Islands EMS. “We have much better tools and training than we did back then.”

One of several innovations is an improved process of communicating with hospital staff. When EMTs are called to the aid of someone who seems to be suffering from a heart attack, they can fax electrocardiogram results ahead to the hospital, saving valuable time. They also have the ability to call ahead and arrange for the Cardiac Catheterization Lab team to assemble and prepare for an emergency angioplasty.

“One of our main goals is to reduce the time between the initial call and the surgical procedure,” said Nelson. He adds that while American Heart Association guidelines recom­mend the time from the initial call to the cardiac interventional procedure be less than 90 minutes, it is generally done in under 60 minutes - and has been done in as little as 12 minutes - at Cape Cod Hospital.

Many Cape Cod ambulances are equipped with life-saving cardiac devices, which are electronically linked to the two hospitals' emergency departments. Herb Gray, M.D., Emergency Medicine physician at Falmouth Hospital, agrees that quick response time is critical for heart attack sufferers. “Our job,” he said, “is to quickly determine if a patient is suffering from cardiac or non-cardiac chest pain.”

Patients suffering from heart attacks will then receive the appropriate care, and the Cape's growing capacity to handle a variety of cardiac problems means that a growing number of patients will be treated locally, avoiding a lengthy trip to Boston.