Comparison of pre-hospital emergency services time intervals in patients with heart attack in Arak, Iran

BACKGROUND: After cardiac arrest, the possibility of death or irreversible complications will highly increase in the absence of cardiac resuscitation within 4 to 6 minutes. Accordingly, measuring the pre-hospital services time intervals is important for better management of emergency medical services delivery. The purpose of this study then was to investigate pre-hospital time intervals for patients with heart attack in Arak city, based on locations and time variables. METHODS: This is a retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study, which was conducted at the Arak Emergency Medical Services (EMS) during 2017-2018. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 13. RESULTS: The total number of heart attack patients registered in Arak emergency medical services was 2,659 of which 51% of patients were males. Six percent of patients were under 25 and about 49 percent were between 46 and 65 years old. The average of activation, response, on-scene, transportation, recovery and total time intervals were 3:30, 7:56, 15:15, 13:34, 11:07, 12:11, and 41:25, respectively. In the city area, the shortest and longest average response time intervals were in spring and winter, respectively. In out of the city area, the shortest average response time interval was in summer and the longest one in autumn. The shortest and the longest average response time intervals in the city area were in June and March, respectively, and in out of the city area, the shortest average response time interval was in June and the longest one in April. CONCLUSIONS: The shorter response and delivery time interval compared to the other studies may indicate improvement in the provision of EMS. Special attention should be paid to the facilities and equipment of vehicles during cold seasons to be in the shortest possible time. Also, training and informing the staff more about the code of cardiac patients along with general public education can help improve these intervals.