UCSF Cardiologists Lead Nation in ER Heart Attack Care

UCSF Medical Center ranks No. 1 nationwide for the speed with which heart attack patients are treated using balloon angioplasty, a procedure to open narrowed or blocked blood vessels of the heart. Patients were treated by UCSF interventional cardiologists less than an hour after arriving in the Emergency Department, considerably faster than the 90-minute benchmark of the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR). For a 12-month period ending June 2008, UCSF was first among more than 850 hospitals participating in an NCDR survey. In fact, UCSF, which started reporting its treatment time to the NCDR in January 2007, has led the nation since April 2007. The NCDR, working in conjunction with the American College of Cardiology, compiles benchmarking data for cardiovascular patient care. In 2007, the average time reported by hospitals to the NCDR for balloon angioplasty – beginning when the patient enters the emergency room – was 118 minutes. Currently, the average time among all hospitals reporting is 106 minutes. The American College of Cardiology initiated a campaign to improve what’s called “door-to-balloon” time to 90 minutes or less because the risk to patients increases significantly with every minute delayed beyond 90 minutes for treatment. Yerem Yeghiazarians, MD, and Thomas Ports, MD, interventional cardiologists and co-directors of the Adult Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at UCSF, said this outstanding performance reflects the hard work of many people in the Emergency Department and Cardiac Catheterization Lab, as well as cardiology fellows and interventional cardiologists. Many changes have been made at UCSF Medical Center, including adding a nurse to the on-call team of the Cardiac Catheterization Lab, which has resulted in improved and faster care to heart attack patients. Karen Rago, administrative director, Heart and Vascular Center, and Hummy Badri, data quality assurance coordinator, Heart and Vascular Center, ensured that UCSF’s performance data were collected and reported to the NCDR.