Taking it to heart; Availability of emergency angioplasty could be key to best outcomes for heart attack patients--but offering the service might not be so healthy for a hospital's finances.(Medical Advances)

Modern Healthcare, January, 2004 by Becker, Cinda

Byline: Cinda Becker

A study published last August that compared one of healthcare's hottest topics-coronary angioplasty-with medication in the treatment of heart attacks dropped a potential bombshell on community and rural hospitals that cannot provide interventional cardiac services.

Heart attack patients who were transferred in less than two hours from hospitals that could not perform the invasive procedure to hospitals that could fared significantly better than heart attack patients who were simply given clot-busting drugs in local emergency rooms. Transfer to a so-called invasive treatment center reduced the risk of a second heart attack by about 40%, according to the Danish study, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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