Life-Saving Treatment Seldom Used for Heart Attack Patients

Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the United States, but a new study indicates that hospitals rarely use a treatment that could potentially save the lives of heart attack patients.

This treatment involves cooling the body to help protect the brain from the devastating effects of a lack of oxygen. In this treatment, the temperature of the body is lowered to 89.6°F to protect against brain damage caused by lack of blood flow and oxygen.

The treatment has been shown to increase survival rates of patients who suffer from heart attacks. In fact, the procedure, called therapeutic hypothermia, has saved the lives of an increasing number of people who suffered cardiac arrest when they were outside hospitals.

However, it is distressing to note that even though many hospitals are aware of the therapeutic benefits of therapeutic hypothermia, they often fail to use this treatment when patients go into cardiac arrest in their facilities. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed data involving more than 67,000 patients who suffered heart attacks at American hospitals between 2003 and 2009. Just about 2% of these patients received therapeutic hypothermia in spite of the well-established benefits of using this treatment, according to the research published in the journal Critical Care Medicine.

Part of the reason could be lack of established proper protocols for the use of the treatment, which probably causes hesitation among medical personnel, the researchers suggested.

Failure to appropriately treat a person who has suffered a heart attack, or even to diagnose a heart-attack, could be negligence. Cardiac arrest is one of the most common conditions in the United States, but physicians may miss the signs and send a patient home with medication for symptomatic relief.