Great strides have been made in the past twenty years in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and mortality from this typically sudden-onset and emergent condition has reduced dramatically. Improvement has been the result of rigorous research into the most effective interventions and setting critical timeliness goals for interventions to reperfuse affected cardiac tissue.
Timely intervention is the key to reducing risk of mortality and permanent cardiac damage. Application of reliability principles – reducing steps and complexity, standard approaches and effective communication – has been employed by many hospitals to improve time from patient arrival to reperfusion. In fact, some hospitals are working towards even higher levels of performance by improving time from start of symptoms to reperfusion.
