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The need for mobile EKG machines

Minutes and seconds count when someone is having a heart attack, and medical units in South Carolina are well aware of this fact.  Ever since the invention of mobile EKG machines primarily used in ambulances, emergency medical professionals have been trying to find ways to get them.

This small black machine, with its 12-lead electrocardiograph, can shave twenty minutes or more from the time it would take doctors to diagnose a heart attack.  As a result, all the emergency medical systems in Abbeville, Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties in South Carolina are applying for a grand that would put one of these mobile EKG machines in every ambulance.

Why is it so important to get these machines in every ambulance?

With these mobile units, paramedics could more accurately determine whether a patient is having a heart attack.  By transmitting the patient’s heart readings directly to the hospital emergency room, via Bluetooth, the appropriate lifesaving measures can be taken immediately upon the patient’s arrival at the hospital.

In addition to monitoring the heart’s electrical impulses, these mobile EKG units can also check a patient’s blood oxygen concentration and blood pressure.  Having these new machines would bring these emergency medical services up to South Carolina’s state requirements, enabling them to send information directly to the ER from the ambulance.

Managing Outcomes

According to AnMed Health’s Director of Clinical Outcomes, the average time it takes to get a patient from arrival at the hospital to the balloon valve is 67 minutes.  With mobile EKG machines, 20 minutes or more could be shaved off that time.

Currently, some ambulances in the area use three-lead EKG machines, which can be used to determine an irregular heartbeat, but they cannot show how the heartbeat became irregular, which leaves an additional step for doctors to perform upon the patient’s arrival.

The goal of these grants would be to put a more advanced EKG machine in every mobile lifesaving unit throughout the region.