Sponsors: Funding Letter for Corporate Sponsors
Heart disease or more specifically heart attack death has been the leading cause of death for adult Americans since 1990. It has been in that position for as long as we can remember. It is truly a killer and the horrendous statistics tell us that it kills more Americans each year (600,000 deaths) more than all of the accumulative deaths of Americans killed in past wars.
It need not do so if we can put together a strategy that is aimed at
early intervention when heart attacks have beginnings. The problem in the
United States is that heart attack is a crashing illness and we wait for
the chest pain (which is a manifestation of a heart attack) to be severe
and prolonged before coming into the so called Emergency Departments.
The severity of the pain and the emergency of the situation should tell us
that the end results are going to turn out poor and indeed this turns out to
be the case.
This however need not take place. In the war in Kuwait we
demonstrated that a General is important, that a strategy is important and
that high tech laser precision bombing as well as national support from
the American public could not only help win the war within a short period
of time, but hold American casualties to less than 200 deaths. If we can
muster our efforts for a war outside the United States, why can't we put
together a similar strategy and win the war at home where so many
Americans die each year and need not do so.
The strategy that we are talking about is based on the fact that heart attacks have beginnings and that beginnings are recognizable long before the crash. Intervention early amounts to acute prevention, and this is the strategy that can be employed throughout the United States in an effort to take heart attack deaths out of first place. This early heart attack awareness effort is called EHAC the acronym for early heart attack care. We are familiar with the acronym CPR which stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation when the patient has died and needs to be resuscitated. EHAC is at the opposite end of the spectrum and needs even more attention for the potential benefits present at this earlier stage.
In association with this awareness program for the community, there
is also a hospital effort being made to put together Chest Pain Centers in
every hospital in the United States in an effort to focus attention on chest
discomfort before the chest pain as an entry point to encourage patients
to come in earlier so that more can be done. This effort is now possible
because chest pain centers have been able to establish critical pathways
that allow for the low probability patient to be worked up without being
admitted and becomes cost effective. It thus provides a screening
mechanism in the emergency Department for patients with early heart
attack symptoms.
St. Agnes HealthCare was the first hospital in the Nation to put together a chest pain center in 1981. Presently 4,000 patients are seen each year and managed efficiently and effectively. Since that time, the St. Agnes program has become national and has provided this information to other hospitals throughout the United States. Within the last 5 years more than 700 hospitals have come on board with similar type programs. It is projected that every hospital in the United States will have a chest pain center before the year 2000.
What is desperately needed at the present time is to get the message
out to the American public through education that early heart attack
awareness is important in order to reduce the #1 killer of the adult
population in the United States.
To fund this increasingly significant program, the Paul Dudley White Coronary Care System at St. Agnes HealthCare is seeking funds from Foundations and Corporations and individuals benefactors. The task of bringing this EHAC message to the school systems in the entire country is projected to cost approximately 2 million dollars. This strategy of enhancing community awareness for heart attack beginnings linked up with developing chest pain centers (expected to take place in every hospital in the United States) forms the basis for the EHAC strategy to reduce significantly heart attack deaths and take heart disease out of first place before the year 2000. This is not only possible, but it is happening. It just needs adequate funding to get the message out and put this strategy into place. What is being requested is an opportunity to discuss this strategy with your organization for an unrestricted Grant.
Sincerely,
Raymond D. Bahr, MD, FACP, FACC
Medical Director
The Paul Dudley White Coronary Care System
Saint Agnes Hospital
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