Hudson Star Observer
If you’re going to have a heart attack, Hudson is one of the better places in the country to have it.
The local ambulance and rescue service’s upgrade to paramedic level service three years ago, along with a push by Regions Hospital in St. Paul to improve emergency care in western Wisconsin, has boosted survival rates for Hudson-area victims of cardiac arrest significantly above the national average.
So far this year, 29 percent of the cardiac arrest patients that St. Croix Emergency Medical Services has transported have returned to spontaneous breathing and blood flow by the time they reached the hospital, according to EMS Chief Eric Christensen.
Before it went to paramedic-level service in January 2005, just 8 percent of the cardiac arrest patients that St. Croix EMS transported had their pulse back and were breathing normally upon their arrival at the hospital.
Christensen said the national average for heart attack victims returning to normal functioning before arrival at the hospital is between 10 and 14 percent.
A lot has changed in the field of emergency cardiac care, according to Christensen.
“In the 20 years that I’ve been doing this, it has gone from almost load-and-go (to the hospital), to (providing) a few basic medications, to beginning actual definitive care for cardiac emergencies,” Christensen said.
The upgrade to paramedic-level service allowed St. Croix EMS to equip its workers and vehicles with the technology and medications needed to diagnose certain types of cardiac arrests and begin the treatment for them on the way to the hospital.
The portable EKG (electrocardiogram) monitors kept in the ambulance service’s two Dodge Durango chase vehicles are able to detect an ST elevated myocardial infarction, a relatively common type of cardiac arrest.
Once it is determined that the patient is in cardiac arrest, the treatment begins at the scene with ambulance personnel administering oxygen and life-saving medications such as nitroglycerin (to increase blood flow and oxygen supply to the heart), heparin (a blood thinner) and beta blockers, as well as morphine for pain.
The crew has a defibrillator for restoring the patient’s normal heart rhythm and an infusion pump to regulate the flow of medications that they begin giving him or her intravenously.
“We operate under the assumption that we are providing a practice of medicine,” said Christensen. “When you’re talking medical care, you have pre-hospital medical care and hospital medical. There have been many, many advances in both pre-hospital and hospital care.”
Dr. Mark Druffner of Hudson Physicians Clinic and Hudson Hospital is the medical director for St. Croix EMS.
Another advancement in the care of Hudson-area heart attack victims is that many of the patients now go directly to an operating room at Regions Hospital or United Hospital in St. Paul to have their blocked artery opened.
Regions Hospital, which works in partnership with Hudson Hospital, initiated its program to improve emergency service to outlying areas by establishing a medical communications center that functions almost like an air traffic control station does at an airport.
Once a St. Croix EMS paramedic determines that a patient is in cardiac arrest, he or she contacts East Metro Medical Control at Regions. The medical communications center gathers information on the patient’s condition and notifies a medical team at the Regions’ cardiac catheterization lab that the heart attack victim will be arriving shortly.
According to Christensen, the average time that elapses between St. Croix EMS reaching the cardiac arrest patient and the patient being on the operating table is 53 minutes.
The time element is critical, said Jon Stidham, cardiology outreach coordinator for Regions Hospital. The sooner a blockage is opened, the better the patient’s chances of survival. And opening the blockage quickly also preserves heart tissue, leading to fewer problems down the road for patients that survive.
Stidham is a Hudson resident. He worked as a charge nurse at Hudson Hospital before taking his current position with Regions in August. He still fills in at Hudson Hospital from time to time as a casual-call nurse.
The medical team at the Regions cardiac catheter lab shoots some dye into the patient’s blood to find the heart blockage. Then a catheter is inserted in an artery in the groin and pushed upward to the blockage in the heart, where a stent is inserted to keep the artery open.
Stidham calls it an amazing procedure.
People who a few years ago would have been dead if they suffered the same heart attack are walking out of the hospital five days later.
They can receive their follow-up care in the Specialty Clinic at Hudson Hospital, which is visited by a Regions cardiologist once a week.
Last month, Regions was named one of the nation’s top 100 heart hospitals by Thomson Healthcare, a company that completes an annual review of hospital cardiac care.
“It’s really a team effort,” Christensen says of emergency care for heart attack victims. The players include everyone from the person reporting the emergency to paramedics to the medical team at the hospital, he said
If you’re going to have a heart attack, Hudson is one of the better places in the country to have it.
The local ambulance and rescue service’s upgrade to paramedic level service three years ago, along with a push by Regions Hospital in St. Paul to improve emergency care in western Wisconsin, has boosted survival rates for Hudson-area victims of cardiac arrest significantly above the national average.
So far this year, 29 percent of the cardiac arrest patients that St. Croix Emergency Medical Services has transported have returned to spontaneous breathing and blood flow by the time they reached the hospital, according to EMS Chief Eric Christensen.
Before it went to paramedic-level service in January 2005, just 8 percent of the cardiac arrest patients that St. Croix EMS transported had their pulse back and were breathing normally upon their arrival at the hospital.
Christensen said the national average for heart attack victims returning to normal functioning before arrival at the hospital is between 10 and 14 percent.
A lot has changed in the field of emergency cardiac care, according to Christensen.
“In the 20 years that I’ve been doing this, it has gone from almost load-and-go (to the hospital), to (providing) a few basic medications, to beginning actual definitive care for cardiac emergencies,” Christensen said.
The upgrade to paramedic-level service allowed St. Croix EMS to equip its workers and vehicles with the technology and medications needed to diagnose certain types of cardiac arrests and begin the treatment for them on the way to the hospital.
The portable EKG (electrocardiogram) monitors kept in the ambulance service’s two Dodge Durango chase vehicles are able to detect an ST elevated myocardial infarction, a relatively common type of cardiac arrest.
Once it is determined that the patient is in cardiac arrest, the treatment begins at the scene with ambulance personnel administering oxygen and life-saving medications such as nitroglycerin (to increase blood flow and oxygen supply to the heart), heparin (a blood thinner) and beta blockers, as well as morphine for pain.
The crew has a defibrillator for restoring the patient’s normal heart rhythm and an infusion pump to regulate the flow of medications that they begin giving him or her intravenously.
“We operate under the assumption that we are providing a practice of medicine,” said Christensen. “When you’re talking medical care, you have pre-hospital medical care and hospital medical. There have been many, many advances in both pre-hospital and hospital care.”
Dr. Mark Druffner of Hudson Physicians Clinic and Hudson Hospital is the medical director for St. Croix EMS.
Another advancement in the care of Hudson-area heart attack victims is that many of the patients now go directly to an operating room at Regions Hospital or United Hospital in St. Paul to have their blocked artery opened.
Regions Hospital, which works in partnership with Hudson Hospital, initiated its program to improve emergency service to outlying areas by establishing a medical communications center that functions almost like an air traffic control station does at an airport.
Once a St. Croix EMS paramedic determines that a patient is in cardiac arrest, he or she contacts East Metro Medical Control at Regions. The medical communications center gathers information on the patient’s condition and notifies a medical team at the Regions’ cardiac catheterization lab that the heart attack victim will be arriving shortly.
According to Christensen, the average time that elapses between St. Croix EMS reaching the cardiac arrest patient and the patient being on the operating table is 53 minutes.
The time element is critical, said Jon Stidham, cardiology outreach coordinator for Regions Hospital. The sooner a blockage is opened, the better the patient’s chances of survival. And opening the blockage quickly also preserves heart tissue, leading to fewer problems down the road for patients that survive.
Stidham is a Hudson resident. He worked as a charge nurse at Hudson Hospital before taking his current position with Regions in August. He still fills in at Hudson Hospital from time to time as a casual-call nurse.
The medical team at the Regions cardiac catheter lab shoots some dye into the patient’s blood to find the heart blockage. Then a catheter is inserted in an artery in the groin and pushed upward to the blockage in the heart, where a stent is inserted to keep the artery open.
Stidham calls it an amazing procedure.
People who a few years ago would have been dead if they suffered the same heart attack are walking out of the hospital five days later.
They can receive their follow-up care in the Specialty Clinic at Hudson Hospital, which is visited by a Regions cardiologist once a week.
Last month, Regions was named one of the nation’s top 100 heart hospitals by Thomson Healthcare, a company that completes an annual review of hospital cardiac care.
“It’s really a team effort,” Christensen says of emergency care for heart attack victims. The players include everyone from the person reporting the emergency to paramedics to the medical team at the hospital, he said
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