Danbury Hospital —

Heart Attack Patients’ EKG Tests Will Be Transmitted From Incoming Ambulances  

By Andrew Gorosko

To expedite medical care for heart attack patients, Danbury Hospital will start using a system that allows patient electrocardiograms (EKG) to be performed inside incoming ambulances, and then electronically transmitted to the hospital before the patient arrives at the emergency room.

Patrick Broderick, MD, chairman of the hospital’s emergency medicine department, said the hospital plans to start using the Medtronic Life Net system about August 1.

A Medtronic receiving station is being installed in the hospital emergency department’s critical care unit to receive wirelessly transmitted EKG’s from ambulances carrying heart patients toward the hospital from northern Fairfield County and from parts of adjacent New York State, he said.

Receiving patients’ EKG test results before the patients arrive at the hospital will provide medical personnel with about ten minutes of warning time to plan which staff members and what medical equipment need to be available when the heart patient arrives at the emergency room, Dr Broderick said. Until now, such EKG tests have been performed on patients after they arrive at the hospital.

Obtaining  EKG test results more quickly will speed the treatment process for heart patients, he said.

The sooner that doctors in the hospital receive EKG test results on a patient, the better prepared they will be to activate the proper medical teams to the treatment of the incoming patient, he said.

 Although such EKG tests done in the field most often would be performed by paramedics inside incoming ambulances, such tests also could be performed on patients inside their homes, at businesses, or at the patients’ doctors’ offices, Dr Broderick said.

Doing the EKG tests within the incoming ambulances though would speed those patients’ arrival at the hospital, he noted. The ambulance would briefly park and stay motionless while the EKG test is performed because such testing is most accurately done while the patient is stationary, the doctor said. 

The EKG test results will be transmitted from the ambulance to the hospital via a cellular telephone network. Alternately, such data could be transmitted via conventional telephone lines.

In the event that the incoming ambulance is traveling in an area with limited cellular telephone service or no service, the transmitter will repeatedly and continuously seek to transmit the test results.

The transmitted EKG results would be that of a “12-lead” test, which is the same test that is performed in the hospital, Dr Broderick said.  Such a noninvasive test provides “a comprehensive view of the heart,” he said.

The test results’ transmission from the incoming ambulance will provide doctors with both a paper copy and an electronic version of the patient’s EKG.  

“It will save lives, and it will save (heart) muscle,” Dr Broderick said of the expedited, remote EKG testing.

By having the EKG test results available before a heart patient arrives at the hospital, doctors will be able to rapidly take steps that would broadly improve a patient’s long-term survival prospects, as well as specifically improve the patient’s long-term quality of life, Dr Broderick said.

Dr Broderick said the Medtronic system will be functioning before the hospital opens its planned “angioplasty suite” intended for advanced care for heart attack victims.

Through the hospital’s advanced heart care system, which was approved last year by state regulators,  Danbury Hospital annually will be able to keep on the premises 300 to 400 patients who formerly would have been transferred to other hospitals for heart care, Dr Broderick stated.

“Timely care for heart attacks is essential…Early treatment saves lives and preserves the heart when an acute attack ensues,” according to Andrew M. Keller, MD, the hospital’s chief of cardiology.

In 2004, Danbury Hospital received state approval to operate a Regional Heart and Vascular Center, where open heart surgeries have been performed since late January 2005. In late summer, the hospital plans to start providing emergency angioplasties as treatment for heart attacks.

The Medtronic system to be used at the hospital to receive EKG test results transmitted from incoming ambulances dovetails with a joint ongoing project between Danbury Hospital and IBM, which is designed to expedite the medical services provided to patients at the emergency room, said Dr Broderick.