Northeast Tarrant County medics and emergency department physicians are using an app to provide quicker life-saving treatment for heart attack patients.
Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Grapevine and several northeast Tarrant County EMS teams are using a new technology called Pulsara.
The app, which can be downloaded onto a smartphone, joins together the EMS team, emergency department team and hospital cardiac catheterization team with one touch.
The technology was recently used to save the life of 55-year-old Thomas Moran, a North Texas limousine driver.
Moran suffered a heart attack while waiting for a client at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in February.
"I had a slight pressure on my chest. It wasn't like an elephant sitting on my chest, but it was a slight pressure. The main thing was I couldn't get any air, no matter how hard I tried to breathe," Moran said.
"We knew when we walked into the terminal area that this guy is having a cardiac event, just by the way he looked," said Lamar Adams, paramedic with the D/FW Airport EMS Team.
The D/FW Airport EMS team is one of 11 Tarrant County EMS systems using Pulsara.
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The EMS team can alert the emergency department of an incoming patient, along with medical history details. Physicians can view real-time ECGs on their phone and determine if the patient immediately needs a procedure in the cardiac cath lab set up.
The use of app is shaving minutes off door-to-balloon time.
The national goal is 90 minutes, but new this app has significantly reduced the time to as little as 26 minutes, as was the case with Moran.
"This makes it so we know what we are dealing with when we get to the hospital. We know, especially in a situation like this, that this is a major, life-threatening, big territory and that we need to get there quickly," said Dr. Kevin Theleman, Moran's attending interventional cardiologist at Baylor Scott & White Grapevine.
Moran was treated quickly and suffered no heart damage.
"I had no idea what they were doing or how they were doing it. All I know is that they saved my life and I'm very happy to be walking around, talking to everyone," Moran said.
Baylor Grapevine piloted the new technology with D/FW Airport, Grapevine, Southlake, Euless and Keller EMS teams.
Before implementing this app, the EMS teams and hospital teams communicated through pagers, faxes and emails.
