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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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A "Lifeline" for Heart Attack Patients in Iowa

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Friday, December 9, 2016   

DES MOINES, Iowa - Time is precious when a heart attack strikes, and in Iowa, a health-care initiative is connecting heart-attack patients to medical care faster.

Mission Lifeline is a collaboration of emergency medical services providers, hospitals and health-care organizations and agencies. They're working to find the gaps that lead to slower and less effective patient care, particularly for rural Iowans.

One of those gaps, said Matt Imming, emergency-services supervisor with Buena Vista Regional Medical Center, is folks not calling 911 when experiencing a heart event. He said emergency care is crucial, especially during an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), which is when blood is completely blocked to a portion of the heart.

"It might seem that you can get to the hospital faster," Imming said, "but we have a lot of evidence to support that we can actually provide definitive care if you are having a heart attack, or that single-vessel blockage or that STEMI, and getting you to where you need to be."

Over the past two years, nearly 100 rural EMS agencies in Iowa and 40 hospitals have received funding through Mission Lifeline to improve work in transporting and treating heart-attack patients. Another round of EMS funding currently is being awarded.

Imming said about two in three STEMI patients do not receive any form of treatment to restore blood flow. However, the initiative is helping Iowans and emergency responders identify heart attacks faster, and improving access to life-saving treatments before significant heart damage, or even death, occurs.

"We have seen some reductions in the mortality/morbidity from these patients," he said, "and have found several of these STEMIs pre-hospital that we would have missed or not recognized for significant amount of time and were able to get them off to where they need to be."

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has invested more than $4.5 million for Mission Lifeline in Iowa, and is working in conjunction with the medical community and the American Heart Association on the initiative.

More information is online at missionlifelineia.heart.org.


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