Emergency Cardiac Services

During a heart attack, every moment that passes increases the risk of permanent damage to the heart muscle. That’s why we combine time, technology, and team to keep treatment as effective and efficient as possible.

Time, Technology, and Team

Our ambulance personnel can transmit information as they gather it, saving precious moments and getting our Emergency Department doctors prepared for a patient’s arrival. Doctors will read EKGs before they even see the patients and angioplasty can be performed right in our catheterization lab, keeping treatment time to an absolute minimum.

We are ready to deliver care with the most advanced technology, including our state-of-the-art catheterization suite with two cath labs. And our dedicated team? Together, our staff of exceptional technologists and nurses bring a combined 40 years of catheterization lab experience to every procedure performed at WellSpan Evangelical Community Hospital.

Angioplasty

A procedure that uses a catheter to treat a blockage in the arteries of the heart is called angioplasty. Typically, angioplasty is performed by threading a slender balloon-tipped catheter from an artery in the groin or wrist to a blockage in an artery of the heart. The balloon is then inflated, compressing the blockage and widening the narrowed heart artery to facilitate blood flow. More than 90% of coronary angioplasty procedures include stenting, or the use of a tiny wire mesh tube used to open an artery.

Saving Lives Together

The national standard for “door-to-balloon” time is 90 minutes. Door-to-balloon time is a measure of how quickly a team is able to restore blood flow in a patient having a heart attack; it is tracked from when the patient arrives in the hospital “door” (or emergency department) to the point in time when angioplasty is used to open the blocked heart artery causing the heart attack. The sooner the blockage is opened, the less damage to the heart muscle.

Rather than transporting patients to another hospital for emergency angioplasty, our patients can be taken to WellSpan Evangelical Community Hospital's cath lab, minimizing time to treatment, and allowing diagnosis and treatment to happen all in one place. WellSpan Evangelical Community Hospital’s “door-to-balloon” time is consistently below national standard.