A patient who enters Ventricular Fibrillation (a condition where there is no coordination in the contraction of the heart chambers) has zero blood pressure and the brain gets damaged in three minutes. Such a patient will develop cardiac arrest, will require advanced cardiac care and there are only three ‘platinum minutes’ to save the life.
A 55-year-old person, who was in ventricular tachycardia, in which state the blood pressure is between 40 and 50, was sent to the Ramesh Hospitals on Friday. By the time the patient arrived at the gate he had gone into Ventricular Fibrillation. Because of the platinum minutes left, the life of the patient could be saved, said interventional cardiologist and Dr Ramesh Education Society president P. Ramesh Babu said.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, he said the Golden Hour and Platinum Minutes concepts had sunk in the public mind and more cases were being brought to the hospitals before serious damage was done.
In another case, the ECG of an 81-year-old woman who suffered a cardio respiratory attack was a “flat-line” (referred to as cardiac asystole in medical parlance) when she arrived at the hospital, but the doctors could revive her and she was recovering on the ventilator, he said. If either of the patients had been brought a minute late the doctors would have been helpless, Dr. Babu said.
