Comparison of pre-hospital emergency services time intervals in patients with heart attack in Iran

After cardiac arrest, the possibility of death or irreversible complications will highly increase in the absence of cardiac resuscitation within 4 to 6 minutes. Accordingly, measuring the pre-hospital service time intervals is important for better management of service delivery. The purpose of this study then was to investigate pre-hospital time intervals for patients with heart attack in Arak city in 2017, based on location and time variables. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of which, registered at the Arak emergency medical services (EMS) in 2017 related to time intervals of heart attack patients. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 13. Results: In total, 51% of patients were males. Six percent of patients were under 25 and about 49 percent were between 46 and 65 years old. The average of activation, response, crash scene, transportation, recovery and total time intervals were 3:30, 7:56, 15:15, 13:34, 11:07, 12:11, and 41:25, respectively. In the city area, the shortest and longest average of response time interval was in spring and winter, respectively. In out of the city area, the shortest average of response time interval was in summer and the longest in autumn. The shortest and longest average response time interval in the city was in June and March, respectively, and in out of the city area, the shortest average response time interval was in June and the longest in April. Conclusion: The shorter response time interval and delivery time interval compare to the other studies may indicate improvement in the provision of EMS. Special attention should be paid to the facilities and equipment of vehicles during cold seasons in order to be in the shortest possible time. Also, more training and informing staff about the code of cardiac patients along with general public education can help improve these intervals.