Elmhurst Hospital sets record "door-to-balloon" time in saving heart attack patient

The day started like any other for Bill Idasek. The 54-year-old Lombard resident had early morning meetings with clients. But at mid-morning, December 3, 2014 took a dramatic turn when Idasek started feeling pain in his chest while sitting in his truck in the parking lot of an Addison shopping mall.

“I had never felt anything like that in my life,” recalls Idasek. “At first I thought it was muscle pain. I tried to drink and stretch. It was strange. The pain got worse and worse. I got out of the truck and tried to get some air. A lot of things go through your mind. I couldn’t believe it was a heart attack, but I knew it was. I wasn’t going to ignore it.”

That life-saving decision led Idasek to the Immediate Care at the Elmhurst Memorial Lombard Health Center.

“The pain came back with a vengeance while I was going in. I was in the full throes of it,” says Idasek. “It was comforting and quite impressive to see the speed and communication. It was a blur. Everybody knew what they were doing and before I knew it, I was in an ambulance.”

“It’s good that he went in right away and got medical attention,” says John Cahill, MD, an interventional cardiologist with Elmhurst Hospital and Midwest Heart-Advocate Medical Group. “The EKG was read as showing an acute heart attack. That triggered a sequence of events that led to (Idasek’s) timely treatment at Elmhurst Hospital.”

By timely, Dr. Cahill means 19 minutes, as in “19-minute door-to-balloon.” That’s medical speak for the time it took from the moment Idasek reached Elmhurst Hospital until Dr. Cahill inserted a stent (balloon) to re-open the blocked artery that was causing Idasek’s heart attack.

Door-to-balloon time refers to the window of opportunity to receive life-saving medical care following a heart attack. While the standard of care to treat heart attack patients is within 90 minutes of arriving at a hospital, Elmhurst averages 56 minutes. Idasek’s 19-minute treatment was a new hospital record.

“All members of the team, from the paramedics, to the nurses and technologists, to the doctors, know their role in the process and they performed their jobs with skill and professionalism,” says Laura Eslick, Associate Vice President, Hospital Operations, Elmhurst Hospital. “This allowed Mr. Idasek, and all patients needing emergency heart care, to receive prompt, state-of-the-art treatment.”

Those saved minutes start adding up before a patient arrives at the hospital. Prior to the time Idasek left the Lombard Immediate Care, a cardiac alert was announced at Elmhurst Hospital which activated the heart attack team and prompted the Emergency Department (ED) and Cardiac Catheterization Lab (cath lab) to prepare for the arrival and treatment of a patient.

Typically, a patient goes to the ED for initial treatment and to confirm they’re having a heart attack. In Idasek’s case, he bypassed the ED and went directly to the cath lab, where an angiogram (X-ray of the heart’s blood vessels) showed one of his three main arteries was 99 percent blocked.

Dr. Cahill inserted a catheter with a clot extractor to grab and remove the clot that was blocking Idasek’s artery and then inserted a stent to open the artery and restore normal blood supply to the heart.

“It looked like a normal artery when we were done,” says Dr. Cahill. “He had an ultrasound two days later and the heart muscle was completely normal. There was no permanent damage.”

Idasek’s hospital stay lasted just two days. Three weeks later, he returned to work.

“My situation came out of the blue. I’m not the picture of health but I was in pretty good shape,” says Idasek, who had a physical and went on a four-day backpacking trip with his younger brother in Colorado in the months leading up to his heart attack. “What I really learned is that it doesn’t take a lot to be a little healthier. It has opened my eyes to nutrition and reading food labels.”

For more information about Elmhurst Hospital’s emergency care and door-to-balloon time, visit www.emhc.org/services/emergency-department. To find out if you’re at risk for heart disease, take Elmhurst Hospital’s free five-minute test that could save your life at www.emhc.org/HealthAware.