The Rapid Early Action for Coronary Treatment (REACT) study released July 4 found that most heart attack patients don’t call 911 emergency services when they feel discomfort in their chest.
That trend seems to be changing.
Gary Young, medical director of the emergency department at the Sacred Heart Medical Center, said emergency calls from heart attack patients have doubled since the study was released.
“Every day [before the study was released] we got about 10 patients with chest pain, and last week we got close to 20,” Young said.
The study was conducted between April 1996 and August 1997, and its primary goal was to reduce patient delay from the time of the first heart attack symptoms to time of treatment in the emergency department. Oregon Health Sciences University was one of the Northwest sites for the study.
Jerris Hedges, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine in OHSU, said Eugene and Springfield were chosen in the study because they represent middle American communities. They are not too large like Portland, but they’re big enough to have the advantages of news media, Hedges said.
OHSU has worked with community groups to educate people in the study area. The researchers worked with doctors, nurses, emergency service groups, patients with no heart disease and those high-risk, heart attack patients in McKenzie Willamette Hospital and Sacred Heart Medical Center to enforce awareness of heart attacks and the appropriate response to them.
The REACT study also encourages patients to go to hospitals quickly and call for ambulances rather than driving themselves to the hospital. Hedges suggests patients should take nitroglycerine or aspirin when they start to feel discomfort. The major symptoms of heart attacks include trouble breathing, upset stomach and pressure, tightness and heaviness in the chest.
“When the discomfort doesn’t go away in 15 minutes, they should go to the hospital,” Hedges said.
Hedges said an ambulance usually takes 5 to 6 minutes, maybe up to 10 to 12 minutes, on average to reach patients.
“If the ambulance gets to you, you’ve got a paramedic team that can deliver medicine and oxygen, and if you go into cardiac arrest they can defibrillate you,” he said. “So essentially, it’s like bringing the hospital to the patient.”
In addition, Hedges suggests patients should not call their doctors before they go to the hospital because calling doctors and waiting for their calls wastes crucial treatment time.
“Even if you would reach the doctor quickly in the office, they would only re-enforce the same message,” Hedges said. “So it is unnecessary to even make the call.”
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute sponsored the REACT study. Jeffrey Cutler, director of the clinical applications and prevention program at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Washington, D.C., said the most dangerous part of a heart attack is the first few hours.
The purpose of “our research program here is to conduct the study both to see if people could be educated in such a way that they would respond more quickly and get to the hospital, as well as to find out if a community education program would put into a place and carry out the emergency department overwhelmed by many people,” Cutler said.
The Springfield Fire Department has decided to more forward with the REACT findings. Jean Loun, an SFD spokesperson and a former REACT organizer in Eugene, said there is no question that education about symptoms help people to know that they are having heart attacks and to act fast.
“We just want to reach more and more people,” Loun said.
Eugene resident Donna Jean Fox, 66, said that when her husband had a heart attack they called an ambulance within 15 minutes and that call saved her husband’s life.
“Don’t let it go longer than 15 minutes,” Fox said. “Don’t hesitate to call 911.”