New Heart Attack Technique Could Save Your Life
A new, relatively simple way of treating heart attacks could save thousands of live.
It involves clearing all narrowed arteries when someone is admitted with a heart attack, rather than just the one which is completely blocked.
A trial, involving the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, was so successful that the research was stopped early.
Fatty deposits
At the moment when patients come in with a heart attack they have an emergency angiogram and we usually only treat the artery that has caused the heart attack. Many of these patients have additional narrowings in other arteries. We’re treating all the narrowed arteries at the same time to see if that confers additional benefit. Currently, only the blocked artery is opened again while the new technique involves opening as many as possible at the time of the emergency.
Often, to open a narrowing a stent is used. This involves inserting a stent, or thin tube, to open an artery and restore the blood flow.
Arteries become narrowed by fatty deposits, so although a blood clot may have only blocked one artery, other narrowed arteries are common.
“Most cardiologists thought it wasn’t safe to treat a second or third artery at the same time as the first artery,” Prof Oldroyd said.
“Sometimes the patients would be brought back several weeks later or sometimes only medication would be used. The results of this trial suggest that this recommendation should be revisited.”
Reducing costs
The trial involved 465 patients in five specialist heart centers around the UK. In addition to the Golden Jubilee, they were the London Chest Hospital, Morriston Hospital in Swansea, Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.
The researchers found that the new technique reduced the combined risk of dying, having another heart attack or being left with angina by two-thirds – such a significant finding that the trial was stopped early.
It also only added an average of 20 minutes to each treatment.
The results have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and were presented at an international conference in Amsterdam earlier this month.
Prof Colin Berry, heart specialist at the Golden Jubilee and the University of Glasgow, said: “They were some of the most striking results for a treatment that I have ever seen. The results of this trial really challenge clinical practice.”
“On the other hand there are logistical considerations and cost considerations. However, we would argue that reducing the likelihood of further cardiac events, potentially reducing the heart failure admissions to hospital, is going to reduce costs overall and this should be implemented as soon as possible.”
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