Weekend admission is bad for patients with heart attack

doi:10.1136/bmj.334.7594.609

BMJ 2007;334:609 (24 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.334.7594.609

News

Shortcuts from other journals

Weekend admission is bad for patients with heart attack

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

View larger version (42K):

It's been clear for some time that mortality from heart attackis slightly but significantly higher for patients admitted tohospital at weekends. A new study suggests that in the US atleast, the difference is partly explained by poorer access toinvasive procedures such as percutaneous coronary intervention

The researchers studied more than 200 000 men and women whowere treated for heart attack in New Jersey hospitals between1987 and 2002. People admitted at the weekends were about halfas likely to have an early cardiac catheterisation (adjustedodds ratio 0.52; 95% CI 0.50 to 0.54) and about 40% less likelyto have early percutaneous coronary intervention (0.62; 0.59to 0.65) than patients admitted during the week. They also waitedlonger for treatment. As expected, the researchers also foundthat weekend admission was associated with higher mortality,but the association became weaker and insignificant once theyaccounted . . . [Full text of this article]