Are All Hospitals Created Equal When Treating Unstable Angina?
Dec. 3, 1999, (Atlanta) — When it comes to a heart condition called unstable angina, patients admitted first to smaller, less well-equipped local hospitals may fare just as well as those who go directly to high-tech, specialized hospitals. That’s according to a study in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In the study, patients admitted to more-specialized hospitals, also called tertiary hospitals, were more likely to receive invasive procedures — angiography (injection of dye into the vessels of the heart through the leg vein), bypass surgery, or angioplasty (enlarging a blocked vessel with a balloon or other method) — than those who headed for the nearest community hospital. But even if treatment was delayed so that patients could be transferred to the larger hospital, they still did well, says Josep Lupón, MD, of Hospital Universidad Germans in Badalona, Spain, lead researcher of the study. The study involved 791 patients admitted to four teach
