Primary angioplasty for heart attack

Patients who suffer a heart attack are often taken to a hospital where they are treated with fibrinolytic clot dissolving drugs but do not have facilities for performing balloon angioplasty to open blocked coronary arteries. These patients may be better off waiting for a transfer to a centre where angioplasty is performed, as new research suggests.Previous studies have shown that angioplasty produces better results than clot dissolving treatment at hospitals where both are available. However, it has been unclear if angioplasty is still the best choice if it is delayed.To investigate this researchers from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, assessed the outcomes of 1,572 heart attack patients, most of whom arrived at referral hospitals without angioplasty facilities. They were randomly assigned to immediate anti-clotting treatment or were taken to another centre for angioplasty.

They found that 14.2 percent of patients treated with clot dissolving treatment either died, had another heart attack or a stroke within 30 days. By comparison, only 8.5 percent of those in the angioplasty group had similar outcomes. Primary angioplasty saves 20 lives and results in 60 fewer events for every 1000 patients treated. Researchers concluded that angioplasty for a heart attack is better than the clot dissolving treatment.