The Role of Pre-hospital and Hospital Emergency Staff in Time Management of Acute Myocardial Infarction

According to the latest guidelines, in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) cases, the best intervention to restore blood flow in the occluded coronary arteries is angioplasty at a time less than 90 minutes. Delay in timely implementation of reperfusion is one of the key problems in the management of STEMI. In this review study, the aim is to investigate the role of pre-hospital and hospital emergency staff  in time management of STEMI. For this purpose, the articles published 1999-2019 with available full texts in ProQuest, SID, Science Direct, Google Scholar and Scopus databases were searched using the keywords: Pre-hospital Emergency, Hospital Emergency, Primary Angioplasty, Time Management, Ischemia, and Acute Myocardial Infarction. A total of 59 articles in Persian and English (from 10 different countries) covering both qualitative and quantitative studies were initially yielded. Those which were not a review paper and their full texts were unavailable were excluded from the review. Faster reperfusion reduces the cardiac necrosis area, resulting in reduced morbidity and mortality.  Early ECG recording by the pre-hospital emergency team followed by the activation of the code STEMI by the emergency team can increase the speed of diagnosis, decision making, and transfer of the STEMI patient to receive the best treatment.