Health Minister Edwin Poots has today visited a new state-of the-art Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PPCI) service at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry that is helping to save the lives of heart attack patients.
Patients suffering from a heart attack will be taken immediately to a catheterisation laboratory (Cath Lab) to have a blockage in the blood vessels around their heart removed using a balloon or stent.
The Minister said he was delighted to see at first hand the service being delivered in the “state-of-the-art” new facility.
He added: “Cardiac Catheterisation Labs can be of enormous benefit to patients having a heart attack, allowing them to bypass the Emergency Department and go straight to the lab for treatment.
“This new service was introduced in June 2014 and is already having an impact. The next stage is for the service to move to 24/7 service provision.”
Approximately 40% of hospitalised heart attack patients have a STEMI. This type of heart attack happens when the blood supply to one of the heart’s arteries is cut off completely as a result a blood clot.
High quality care for these patients includes early diagnosis and rapid treatment to reopen the blocked artery.
Until now most STEMIs in Northern Ireland were treated by giving patients a clot-busting drug (thrombolysis).
Patients in the Western Trust will previously have been treated by a paramedic or at Altnagelvin / South West Acute hospital followed by planned PCI which was only available in Belfast prior to this service development in the west of the province.
Dr Albert McNeill, Consultant Cardiologist and Clinical Lead, Western Trust said if a patient has a STEMI heart attack, they will be taken directly to Altnagelvin Hospital for a primary percutaneous intervention (PPCI) which is a procedure to open the heart artery which has blocked.
He added: “This procedure is done by inserting a fine tube called a catheter in the patient’s wrist artery, passing through to the heart and opening the heart artery with a balloon on the catheter.
“Although other ways to open a heart artery have been used in the past for example by using ‘clot busting’ or thrombolytic drugs, research, clinical evidence and international guidelines indicate that PPCI is the treatment of choice for patients with STEMI, which saves lives, reduces complications, speeds recovery and shortens length of hospital stay.”
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