Monterey, CA Heart Attack Treatment Getting Better And Faster, Saving Lives

There have been remarkable advances in health care technology in recent years and I was happy to read in The New York Times today that the number of deaths from heart attacks has declined 38% over the past decade.  Part of the reason for this, however, isn’t technology driven.  It was something simple—a common sense treatment plan led by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.  The new protocol is that paramedics immediately hook up patients to an electrocardiogram in the ambulance so that by the time they arrive at the hospital physicians know how bad the heart attack is and have already laid out a plan of treatment.  With strokes and heart attacks, minutes count.  Thanks to these two great organizations for pointing this out and enabling hospitals to react more quickly when they have a person with a potentially fatal condition coming in.