Abstract
P188 It is currently recommended by the American Heart Association that both stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) patients be treated with urgency, as time dependent medical therapies are available for both conditions. Since stroke symptoms are often vague, it has been hypothesized that stroke patients may not be treated with the same urgency as MI patients by emergency medical services (EMS). To examine this hypothesis, EMS transport times were examined for both stroke and MI patients who used a paramedic-level, county based EMS system for transportation to a single hospital during 1999. Patients were identified by their hospital discharge diagnosis as stroke (ICD-9 430–438) or MI (ICD-9 410–414). Trip sheets with the corresponding transport times were retrospectively obtained from the 911 center. Thirteen patients with both a stroke and MI discharge diagnosis code were excluded from these analyses, leaving 75 stroke and 127 MI patients. While stroke patients were older than MI patients (median 81.1 vs. 73.3 years, p=0.01), the distribution of gender (56.9% women) and ethnicity (68.3% white) was not significantly different between stroke and MI patients. The use of lights and sirens to the scene (84.4%) and to the hospital (10.6%) also was not significantly different between stroke and MI patients. Mean EMS transport times are presented below in minutes, with the corresponding Wilcoxon rank sum test. In this study, all components of EMS transport times were similar for stroke and MI patients. Multiple linear regression predicting transport times confirmed these results. In this single county, EMS urgency for delivery of care was not different for stroke and MI patients.
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