An International conference to avoid cardiac arrests
Posted on: 13/Jul/2013 12:05:09 PM
STEMI India conference on advanced cardiovascular therapeutics was held from Friday. The conference will be held for three days. Dr Mullasari Ajit, director of cardiology at Madras Medical Mission, Dr Matthew Samuel K, a course director with STEMI India and Dr Thomas Alexander while speaking said, “About 95% of Indians who suffer a heart attack don`t use an ambulance to reach a hospital, resulting in many deaths that can be avoided. Only 5% of people use ambulance services. These ambulances have paramedics to provide first-aid. This would cut the mortality rate by 50%. But not many people understand this. Immense amount of public education is needed on using the ambulance services.
We follow the focal point and spoke model in which the focal point would be a STEMI-accredited hospital that can treat heart attacks and the spoke would be district hospitals that can provide the basic first aid. The focus would be on putting a workable system in place — from the point the patient has a heart attack and is transported to hospital till he becomes stable.
Medical staff would be trained to dissolve the clot from the artery through medication before the patient is shifted to a STEMI-accredited hospital. STEMI India partnered the government, ICMR and GVK EMRI ambulance services to conduct a pilot study of 1,000 patients with four `hub and spoke` hospitals to assess the improvement in terms of treatment, mortality and morbidity of heart attacks. The hospitals are Kovai Medical Centre, the Madras Medical Mission, Christian Medical College Vellore and Stanley Medical College and Hospital.”
