The article should really have a picture of a cath lab at the top, not an AED. Advances in catheterization technology are the key factor in reducing heart attack deaths, not AEDs
AEDs are a key factor in ensuring patient survival until we can get them to the cath lab and get them ballooned.
"High quality compressions, early access to defibrillation". For every minute you do not have an effective pulse, your chance of survival goes down about 10%.
Airway management takes a distant back seat. Most meds we give are only mildly, or questionably effective.
But being able to defibrillate a dysrhythmia early is the key to getting the heart working itself - chest compressions are the best we have, but still. It takes us minutes of compressions to get to a suitable arterial pressure for effective perfusion, but ten seconds or less to lose it.
AEDs won't improve volume and arterial flow, but it'll give you a fighting chance of getting to the lab. Compressions alone are not going to do that - they will just preserve tissue.
Aspirin: a blood thinner and painkiller
Blood thinners: given to people at risk of a heart attack to thin the blood and reduce the chance of blood flow being obstructed
Unfortunately PEA and asystole (flatline) do too, and shocking won't fix those -- despite what movies and TV would often have you believe.
Defib is more like rebooting a malfunctioning heart, versus jump starting it.
Paramedics with a manual defibrillator can do other things with other rhythms, but AEDs are limited to those.
Yeah, I found out the hard way, suffering PEA. AEDs are great; but, people should still learn CPR.
aspirin = acetylsalicylic acid
blood thinners = anticoagulants
I have two stents in my heart. They went in with a catheter through an artery in my wrist. They found the places in my heart where the arteries were 80% to 90% blocked, and placed stents there. They said I was five years from a heart attack.
This was an outpatient procedure. I went home that night.
The worst part of it, for me, was that they put a serious tourniquet on my wrist, because once they took the catheter out, I had an open artery. My wrist felt like I lost a bar fight. It ached for a month.
This is so much better than having a heart attack.
How did they know I needed this? I talked to a cardiologist. He told me that, as you age, your athletic performance drops slowly, over decades. That's normal. What's abnormal is when you suddenly can't do something you were able to do a month ago.
So I paid attention when I realized, hey, a month ago I didn't get this winded playing ultimate frisbee. A month ago I recovered faster when I was winded.
So I told that to my GP. He ordered a cardiac stress test for me. This basically is hooking you up to an EKG, putting you on a treadmill, running the treadmill faster and harder until you drop, and watching what your EKG does. If the shape stays the same except faster, you're good. If the shape changes, that's part of your heart not getting enough blood under load. My shape changed. So they ordered the catheterization for me.
So cath labs are about preventing the heart attack, not keeping you from dying once you have one. Not dying is good. But not having it at all is better. I think that may have been the GP's point.
Cath labs *are* (also) about keeping you from dying once you have one. Inserting a stent into someone with an active MI can restore blood flow and minimize tissue damage.
that's not how it works
in a stable person (ie, not actually having a heart attack) stents help symptoms (a little better than medicines, but even that is debatable -- see Orbita trial). Medicines and lifestyle changes prevent heart attacks -- see Courage and Ischemia trials
cath labs are in fact about keeping you from dying once you have a heart attack. The other stents for stable disease like you had are nice -- you feel better faster with fewer medicines that without, but not main thing
source: not going to appeal to authority. See trials mentioned above, or ACC guidelines on management of CAD
It's much more effective than previous treatments (essentially clot-busting drugs, blood thinners, and bedrest), particularly since Drug-Eluting Stents arrived in the early 2000s.