D2B

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A few weeks ago we went on a chest pain call.  Chest pain is really our bread and butter, and most of the time it's people who have stable angina that just didn't go away.  Every once in a while, we get the good old STEMI, which is our decisive way to 'diagnose' a heart attack in the field.  These patients, like this one, stand out from typical chest pain calls.  They are often writhing around, unable to get comfortable, sweating like crazy, pale, and of course, have crushing chest pain.  This patient was pretty classic.  And as soon as I saw that it is not all dramatics, we headed straight to the nearest interventional cath lab. 
I love these kinds of calls.  They are the times that I feel like we're doing what we're meant to do.  I sent the EKG tracing ahead of us so that they could assemble the cath team.  I love when they take us seriously.  'The cardiologist loved your EKG.' one of the doctors told me when we arrived.
So, we got the patient in and left and I finished the story in my head like usual.  But this week, I heard back, that the patients 'door to balloon' time was 33 minutes.  That's the time we arrived at the ER to the time the patent's heart attack was definitively treated.  Within 33 minutes, heart tissue stopped dying. 
I won't be too dramatic, but I was pretty happy to hear that. 

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