Study: People Still Delay Heart Attack Care

People having heart attacks are still waiting too long to get to the hospital, a new study finds. Doctors say heart attacks are best treated soon after symptoms start. But people in the study took an average of 2.6 hours to get to the hospital. Response time did not improve between 2001 and 2006. The study focused on a type of heart attack called non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction, or NSTEMI. It is often less serious than another type, called STEMI. The names refer to the patterns on an electrocardiogram (EKG). Researchers looked at records of 104,000 NSTEMI heart attacks. About 59% of patients took more than 2 hours to get to the hospital. Some groups took even longer than average. They included women, older adults, smokers, non-whites and diabetics. The journal Archives of Internal Medicine published the study. HealthDay News wrote about it November 8.