Reduce door to needle, not door to balloon, times first

Door-to-Needle Times: Let's Not Leave Smaller Hospitals Behind.

CODE FAST: a quality improvement initiative to reduce door-to-needle times.

BACKGROUND Rapid delivery of IV tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in qualifying patients leads to better clinical outcomes. The American Heart Association has reduced target door-to-needle (DTN) times from 60 to 45 min in the hopes of continued process improvements across institutions. OBJECTIVE To start a quality improvement project called CODE FAST in order to reduce DTN times at our insti...

Improving Door-to-Needle Times for Acute Ischemic Stroke

Faster treatment with intravenous alteplase (tissue-type plasminogen activator) results in better outcomes. Although the benchmark door-to-needle time (DTN) has been set at 60 minutes, many centers have been able to exceed this benchmark with median times from 20 to 51 minutes. These local efforts have been supported by national and international efforts to reduce DTN time. For example, the Ame...

Trends in race-based differences in door-to-balloon times.

I n 2004, our group reported that black patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) were more likely to experience delays in reperfusion than white patients, primarily owing to poorer performance of hospitals with a disproportionate representation of black patients. Since that initial observation, several high-profile initiatives have sought to improve national performance ...

Emergency department thrombolysis improves door to needle times.

OBJECTIVE To identify the effect on door to needle (DTN) time of moving the site of thrombolysis delivery from the coronary care unit (CCU) to the emergency department (ED). To ascertain if moving the site of thrombolysis enables appropriate use of thrombolysis. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING CCU and ED of a 450 bed Scottish district general hospital without on-site primary angiop...