Doctors in Italy, at teams from the Ospedali del Tigullio and the ASL4 Chiavarese, report today on a study comparing the outcome of treating ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction quickly, with slower treatment.  Through a study of 790 patients, they established that the median treatment time (symptom onset to baloon treatment) was 180 minutes; and those who were treated faster than this had a significantly lower mortality at 1, 3, 5 and 7 years compared to those who took more than this amount of time to be treated.  At 7 years, the faster-treated patients had a mortality rate of 26% against 37% for the more slowly-treated patients.

Overall delay was generally split equally between patient delay and system or clinical treatment delay; and neither seemed to have a specific independent impact.  This suggests that improvements to mortality rates may be achieved by targetting faster patient access (e.g. through education) as well as improving the speed of treatment access.

Full paper: http://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2012/09/27/heartjnl-2012-302536.full