Quick attention needed for heart-attack cases

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 38

Quick attention needed for heart-attack cases

PA Wellington Doctors and the public should be better educated on the need to get heartattack victims to specialist coronary care units as quickly as possible, says an Auckland Medical School research team.

The team, led by Associate Professor Robert Beaglehole, has studied 905 attacks and 300 sudden (within 24 hours) coronary deaths that occurred in Auckland in the year to March, 1982. In the latest “Medical

Journal,” the researchers said that 61 per cent of patients called a doctor within one hour of the onset of symptoms, compared with 49 per cent in 1974. However, in both 1974 and 1981 only 59 per cent of patients reached a coronary care unit within four hours.

“For hospital management to have a continuing impact on national coronary heart disease mortality rates, it will be necessary for the delays in patientsreaching life support equipment to be reduced substan-

tially,” they said. However, a reduction in heart-attack deaths was more likely to come from more education and prevention of coronary disease. The research team said 71 per cent of male suddendeath victims died within an hour of the attack, compared with 55 per cent of women.

The heart-attack rates were comparable between Maoris and non-Maoris, but Maoris had a sudden death rate three times higher than other ethnic groups.