This  letter is to petition that the cardiac catheterization lab opens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It has been standard practice to perform coronary angiogram and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) quickly for patients with acute myocardial infarction. American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA)  2007 guideline recommend a door-to-balloon interval of no more than 90 minutes.  However, this is not the practice in Newfoundland and Labrador.   Most of the patients with acute myocardial infarction outside of St Johns wait 10-21 days, some even longer, to have angiogram. 

It is said the reason for this practice is that there's no more funding to hire extra staff to run cardiac catheterization laboratory 24/7.  However, we believe to have the cardiac catheterization Lab open 24/7 worth all the money spent, because:

1. It saves lives.  Some patients died while waiting for angiogram.
2. It protect the hearts of patients with myocardial infarction, prevent heart failure from happening, improve quality of life, prolong patients' life, by timely opening the narrowed/blocked coronary artery/arteries of the infarcted myocardium.  If the patient waits several days, the infarcted myocardium may be completely dead, even if the blocked vessel is reopened with stent later.
3. It saves money too.  So many hospitalized patients wait so long, which costs lot of money.  Sometimes, over 40% of inpatients by internists are those with acute myocardial infarction.
 

Thank you