Indian doctors devise model that downs death from heart attacks by 20%
Government data reveals that every second heart attack patient in the subcontinent takes over 400 minutes to arrive at a hospital. That’s 13 times more than the ideal window of 30 minutes.
The two-year data is from the ongoing Management of Acute Coronary Event(MACE) registry of the Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR). It shows that at some places, the time taken for the patient to reach the hospital can be as high as 900 minutes, thanks to the time wasted on transportation.
“A lot of precious time is still being wasted in taking a heart attack patient to a facility that is capable of treating heart attacks. The delay mostly is because of the patient being remotely located in rural areas or belonging to a terrain that is difficult to access,” said Dr Meenakshi Sharma, a scientist at ICMR.
“If the clot buster medicine is not given within three hours, the chances of patient pulling through are near zero. Ideally, it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes from symptoms to the door of a hospital equipped to treat heart attack cases,” says Dr Thomas Alexander of the Kovai Medical Center and Hospital, Coimbatore.
Two doctors step in with a solution
Dr Alexander and Dr Ajit S Mullasari- both from the Madras Medical Mission Hospital, Chennai developed a unique model of heart attack care, thanks to which deaths have been reduced by 20%.
The project, funded by ICMR implemented heart attack management protocol for an year in Tamil Nadu on a trial basis. The results of the novel protocol have been published in the latest issue of JAMA Cardiology. “We tied up with the state government for the project as it required the utilisation of BPL insurance to pay for treatment, government emergency ambulance service that is equipped with advanced gadgets to screen patients, and transfer data and its hospitals to treat,” said Dr Mullasari.
While there were four main hubs, 35 spoke hospitals functioned in the cities, rural regions and the suburbs which were interconnected.
“Smaller hospitals may not be able to provide specialized treatment but they can always administer life-saving interventions under the supervision of experts in a tertiary care facility before referring them,” said Dr Mullasari.
Other states have been invited by ICMR to adopt the program. It’s said that most of them have shown interest. Tamil Nadu is scaling up the program whereas Meghalaya, Karnataka and Telangana will soon start the programme.
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