Study: Heart Attacks Treated Too Slowly

Only one in three U.S. hospitals provides emergency care to heart attack patients quickly enough to meet guidelines for saving lives, a study said Monday.

The study, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, found even top-performing hospitals do not meet American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology guidelines for care in half of their cases.

They often do not perform balloon angioplasty within 90 minutes of a severe heart attack, USA Today said.

Angioplasty is a way of reopening clogged arteries by inflating a tiny balloon at the site of a blockage in a severe heart attack.

Performing the procedure within 90 minutes can cut a patient’s risk of dying by 40 percent, studies have shown.

If every hospital met the guidelines, doctors could save about 1,000 lives each year, Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz says.

Eighty percent of people in the United States live within an hour’s drive of a hospital that provides balloon angioplasty.