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Chest Pain Evaluation Clinic
Chest Pain?
Chest pain can be a very scary thing. Many times people debate whether or not they should "bother" to get this checked by a physician. Sometimes it is written off as "something I ate", and this can have dire consequences. This way of thinking is sometimes perpetuated by people who had chest pain in the past and went to the emergency room to have it evaluated, only to find out it was nothing serious. Still, the fact remains that heart disease is the number one cause of death in males over the age of 45 and of post-menopausal women. Some of these deaths have occurred after the patient was seen in the emergency room.
Each year 5 million people report to the emergency room with chest pain. Some have acute life threatening illnesses, while others have nothing wrong.
When you report to the emergency room with chest pain, the physicians make their diagnosis based on a number of things. Some of these are the symptoms you are presently experiencing such as nausea, vomiting, sweating and chest pains. Next they may perform an electrocardiogram (EKG), which shows the electrical impulses of the heart. They also perform lab tests, which tell the physician if any damage to the heart muscle has occurred. It is not uncommon for all of these tests to be negative when you are in the emergency room. The choice the doctor now must make is whether to allow you to go home, or to admit you to the hospital for two days for extensive testing.
Diagnostic Tools:
The Baldwin Area Medical Center has added another diagnostic tool to this scenario. The hospital has purchased two Marquette Patient Cardiac Monitors with continuous EKG monitoring. If you report to the emergency room with chest pains, and the doctor feels you need further evaluation, you may be admitted to the hospital and placed on one of these monitors for up to 24 hours. The continuous monitoring can pick up any irregularities in the heart rate and heart rhythm. Some of these irregularities can be as brief as 15 to 20 seconds.
As part of this protocol, regularly scheduled blood tests are also done to monitor the enzyme level in your blood. When heart tissue is damaged due to a heart attack, no matter how mild, certain enzymes are released into your system. This does not happen until 6 to 8 hours after the attack occurred. The use of the Marquette Monitors have many advantages to the patient who comes to the emergency room with chest pains: earlier and better diagnosis, decreased cost, and most important - quality care for the patient.
The Marquette Monitors are located in the Baldwin Area Medical Center's Hemness Special Care Unit. Our nursing staff has been specially trained to care for cardiac patients using these specialized cardiac monitors.
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