SYRACUSE -- Saint Joseph's Hospital Health Center and the Greater Baldwinsville Ambulance Corps teamed up recently to demonstrate advances in the emergency treatment of heart attacks.
CNY Central reporter Jim Kenyon was invited to witness the drill. The goal of the heart attack re-enactment was to restore blood flow through the patients heart within the accepted guideline of 90 minutes from the time symptoms set in. The staff at Saint Joseph's say they can do it within 60 minutes. Paramedic Stacey Arvidson says "The problem is you need to catch this early because time is muscle. The longer you wait if you're having chest pain, the more your heart muscle dies."
During the drill, hospital employee Art Chalupnicki pretended to suffer chest pains while removing snow in a parking lot. His co-worker Gloria Alexander noticed the signs of a potential heart attack and called 9-1-1. The signs of a heart attack include chest pain, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, arm and neck pain.
Once the ambulance arrived, the paramedics got to work. Chalupnicki was loaded into the ambulance, where he was hooked up to oxygen, IVs and a portable electrocardiogram. The ambulance is equipped to transmit the EKG results to the emergency room at Saint Joseph's. According to Paramedic Matt Cheevers, "They can call their people 20 to 25 minutes early and they're actually waiting for us instead of us waiting for them."
By having the EKG results in house while the ambulance is en route, the emergency room can alert cardiologist Dr. Ron Caputo and staff at the "cath" lab to be ready and waiting by the time the patient is wheeled into the hospital.
When Chalupnicki arrived, people at the cath lab simulated a procedure in which a line is snaked through an artery to the heart, the blockage is located, and in this case a stent is installed to restore blood to the heart muscle, stopping the heart attack in its tracks.
"We've had somebody in through the door and had their artery open in 18 minutes." Caputo explained, "We can really move if we know it's coming."
