MILWAUKEE, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin recently became the only hospital in the country to offer patients catheterization by an on-site interventional cardiologist and staff 24-hours a day, 7-days a week.
The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association both support a guideline for angioplasties to be performed within 90 minutes of hospital arrival. By having a cardiologist and staff on-site 24-hours a day, St. Luke’s will be able to perform angioplasties much quicker than even the 90-minute guideline since the time needed to call in a doctor and staff from home after hours has been eliminated.
“We know that, up to a point, the faster you open an artery, the more likely you are to minimize the permanent damage to the heart muscle,” says Matthew Mick, M.D., an Interventional Cardiologist at St. Luke’s. “Having doctors and staff here around the clock exemplifies St. Luke’s commitment to offer the best possible response time for people having a heart emergency.”
St. Luke’s is Wisconsin’s leader in angioplasty procedures where a special balloon is placed inside a blocked artery to restore normal blood flow. Between July 2002 and June 2003 St. Luke’s performed more than 3300 angioplasties. The next closest Wisconsin hospital performed just 846 of the same procedures. That’s a difference of nearly 300%. In addition, the catheterization labs at St. Luke’s are some of the busiest in the state, with more than 13,000 procedures (angioplasties, diagnostic catheterizations, stent cases) performed there last year.
“St. Luke’s has a national reputation as being an innovative leader when it comes to heart care,” adds Dr. Mick. “Our ability to offer this level of service to patients shows our dedication to provide the most comprehensive care possible to our patients.”
St. Luke’s Medical Center is a part of Aurora Health Care, a not-for- profit Wisconsin health care provider and a nationally recognized leader in efforts to improve the quality of health care. Aurora offers services at sites in 80 communities throughout eastern Wisconsin.
Aurora Health Care
CONTACT: Steve Pinzer, Media & Community Relations of Aurora HealthCare, +1-414-649-6419
