Collaborative Heart Attack Management Program (CHAMP) restoring heart function in the back of an ambulance, minimizing hospital stays and reducing heath care costs
When a person has a heart attack it means the flow of blood that brings oxygen to the heart suddenly becomes blocked.
In consultation with an emergency physician online for support, paramedics run an EKG tracing on the patient and send that by email to the physician. Once it is determined a heart attack has occurred the paramedic is given the authority to administer the clot-busting drug Tenectplase . “The Canadian Cardiovascular Society guidelines recommend that from first medical contact to treatment, you should be giving the clot-busting drug in 30 minutes or less,” said Ganstal, who works at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. “For every 30-minute delay in treatment there is a 10 per cent increase in death. If you treat within the first hour you’ll save twice as many lives as in the second hour.
In cities where CHAMP is in place, the length of hospital stays for heart attack patients has dropped from an average 6.8 days to 3.6 days for an acute care bed which costs the health care system about $4,000 per day. That works out to $1.4 million in opportunity cost savings, Ganstal said. Three B.C. cities – Kelowna, Vancouver and Victoria – have cardiac catheterization labs which treat heart attack patients by physically opening up the arteries with a catheter to remove the clot. Paramedics attending to heart attacks will bypass the hospitals and will bring the patient directly to the CATH lab to avoid delaying the treatment if the patient arrives within two hours of the heart attack.
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