KEY POINTS:
Many heart attack deaths could be prevented if people knew they were having a heart attack and called an ambulance, an Auckland cardiologist said yesterday.
Robin Norris has called for an audit into how ambulance staff respond to calls for help.
In an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, he also called for further public education about heart attack symptoms.
After studying 2213 British heart attack patients during 1994-95, Dr Norris emphasised the need for patients to get to hospital as quickly as possible.
Two-thirds to three-quarters of all heart attack deaths happened outside of hospital.
The death rates seemed especially high among those under 55, with more than 90 per cent dying out of hospital.
"We found that for patients coming under ambulance care within one hour of onset of symptoms, death could be prevented for up to 30 days ... in about 14 per cent of cases.
"For those coming under care within one to two hours, the proportion was about 10 per cent. The proportion of survivors decreased rapidly when care occurred after two hours, however."
About 80 per cent of the time, the patients were saved by defibrillator machines.
The other 20 per cent were saved by thrombolytic, or clot-busting, medication.
But all this counted for nothing if people did not seek help when they felt prolonged chest pain, Dr Norris said.
"The greatest problem is to make people aware of the potential serious import of new prolonged chest pain."
They had to "seek help urgently from the ambulance service and not from the GP" and allay possible feelings of guilt if the call turned out to be a false alarm.
- NZPA
