Irish Heart Attack Audit 2021

A heart attack is a serious medical emergency. This report analysed data on 1491 patients with a serious heart attack, known as a STEMI, over 2021 A key message from the report focuses on the importance of calling 999/112 as soon as someone experiences any symptoms of a heart attack. This ensures that they receive a timely pre-hospital ECG diagnosis of STEMI by ambulance personnel and are then directly transferred to an appropriate PCI centre. Only 44% of patients with a STEMI sought medical help within 60 minutes of onset of their symptoms.

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Key Findings

All patients with a major heart attack, known as an ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) should have specialist treatment to unblock clogged arteries. There are two types of treatment - thrombolysis, which is a clot-dissolving drug and primary percutaneous coronary intervention (primary PCI) which involves inserting a wire into the blocked artery in order to open it with a balloon and stent. There are 10 hospitals in Ireland, known as PCI centres, who carry out primary PCI.

Key Recommendations

Recommendation 1

Develop a public awareness campaign to encourage people with heart attack symptoms to call 112 or 999 immediately for emergency help in order to facilitate pre-hospital electrocardiogram (ECG) diagnosis of a STEMI.

Recommendation 2

There should be a national and regional focus on quality improvement in the STEMI care pathway.

Recommendation 3

Improve public awareness of the adverse impact of smoking on heart attack risk.

Recommendation 4

Support patients with STEMI to reduce the risk of further heart attack by increasing the rate of referral to cardiac rehabilitation phase 3.