Search

Abstract: Purpose of the study: Estimating the quality of care of the patients presenting an ST-elevation myocardial infarction in Vendee. Patients and method: Prospective observational study carried out over the year 2008. Included patients presenting a myocardial infarction for less than 24hours, they were alive when emergency team arrived, and were taken care of by the SMUR, the emergencies or the cardiology of the hospital of La Roche-sur-Yon. Results: Two hundred and seventeen patients were included, 163 men and 54 women, average age: 65 years. Fifty-six percent of the patients called initially the emergency medical service, half of those within an hour after pain began. Seventy-two percent of them were looked after by a SMUR. Twenty-six percent consulted initially a general practitionner, and one third of those were redirected towards the emergency medical service. Thirty percent of all patients followed the ideal procedure defined by succession of chest pain, emergency medical service call, SMUR, angioplasty or fibrinolysis. The average time between the ECG and the fibrinolysis is 36minutes, or of the arrival in coronarography room is 105minutes. The balloon is inflated 42minutes later. Eighty-six percent of the patients taken care of in the acute phase benefited from a strategy of reperfusion, primary angioplasty (63%) or fibrinolysis (21%). Ninety percent of revascularisations were successful. Conclusion: In the case of the chest pain, the emergency medical service is under-used. The number of revascularised patients is satisfactory, but the whole procedure takes too much time, especially when the treatment is the angioplasty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The role of early reperfusion therapy at the acute stage of myocardial infarctus in elderly patients is debated. The aim of this study was to analyze the prognostic role of reperfusion with IV thrombolysis or primary PTCA in the nationwide USIK database, which prospectively included all pts admitted to a CCU for an AMI < 48 hours in France in November 1998. For the purpose of the present study, only patients admitted within 24 hours of AMI and with one-year follow-up available were included. Of the 1838 patients included, 785 were > 70 years-old, of whom 225 (29%) had early reperfusion therapy with thrombolysis (N = 173) or primary PTCA (N = 52). Patients treated with early reperfusion had a baseline profile that differed substantially from that of patients treated conventionally: women (31% vs 50%, p < 0.001), admission within six hours of symptom onset (84% vs 55%, p < 0.001), history of systemic hypertension (48% vs 60%, p < 0.002), stroke (5% vs 11%, p < 0.01), peripheral arterial disease (8% vs 18%, p < 0.001); congestive heart failure (5% vs 20%, p < 0.001) or previous MI (12% vs 25%, p < 0.001), more anterior location of current MI (40% vs 28%, p < 0.002). Overall one-year Kaplan-Meier survival was 78% for patients with versus 64% for those without reperfusion therapy (p < 0.01). In patients with Q wave myocardial infarction, Cox multivariate analysis showed that reperfusion therapy was an independent predictor of survival (RR 0.66; 95% Confidence Interval: 0.45–0.96), along with age, anterior location and history of congestive heart failure. Therefore, data from this large “real life” registry indicate that reperfusion therapy with either thrombolysis or primary PTCA is associated with improved one-year survival in patients over 70 years of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]