With a view to create better awareness about heart attack, ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction STEMI India in collaboration with Stent for Life, the joint EAPCI and EuroPCR Initiative organised a two-day conference in Mumbai from 31st May to 1st June, 2014.

With more than three million heart attacks happening every year in India, the conference addressed the need for designing of high reliability systems which would measure quality of care in hospitals in Western India i.e. Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh in areas of therapeutic procedures, medications and treating of acute myocardial infarction or heart attack.

The objective of organising this important STEMI conference was to train and equip each hospital in Western India to appropriately manage the patients with heart attack. The long term aim of STEMI INDIA which is dedicated to develop STEMI systems of care in India is to develop a system of care in Mumbai and Western India to deliver appropriate heart attack care to patients within the golden first hour.

Once the process is functional and the system is set in place, STEMI INDIA will train teams for setting up this facility at hospitals in Mumbai and Western India. STEMI accredited hospitals will then treat patients according to current guidelines and within critical golden hour. Doctors from the United States and Europe have done this for the past 10 years and have delivered appropriate care said, Dr Thomas Alexander, director of the STEMI INDIA.

According to an extensive study done by CREATE Registry, co-authored by Dr Prafulla Kerkar course director of STEMI INDIA 2014 it takes an average 360 minutes from onset of pain to treatment time for a patient in India. The pilot study conducted initially by STEMI INDIA in Tamil Nadu on 84 patients has reduced this critical time to 170 minutes with 75 per cent of patients using an ambulance for travel.

The first state to embark on a STEMI system of care has been Tamil Nadu ,where the initial STEMI project in four clusters has been run in partnership with the Government of  Tamil Nadu, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and ambulances from the GVK-EMRI. This project has successfully shown the feasibility and effectiveness of this model, now known as the STEMI INDIA model of care.

According to Dr Kerkar, “When the patient realises the symptoms of a heart attack, in India, 95 per cent of patients travel by public transport and only 5 per cent travel by ambulance. In emergency medicine, the golden hour refers to a crucial time period lasting from a few minutes to an hour following heart attack during which there is the highest likelihood that prompt medical treatment will prevent death. STEMI INDIA is initiating proper treatment to a patient with a heart attack in that golden hour.”

STEMI INDIA is a ‘not for profit’ organisation dedicated to advancing STEMI care in India. STEMI or acute heart attack is not only one of the most challenging clinical conditions in cardiology but also the most gratifying when treated promptly and appropriately.