Chest Pain Center and Heart Attack Care
If you or a loved one has chest pain, you need expert care — fast. El Camino Health’s highly trained heart team diagnoses and treats heart attacks quickly, when seconds count.
When a heart attack strikes, getting expert care fast can help minimize — or even reverse — the devastating effects. Knowing the signs of a heart attack and seeking medical care can save your life.
At the Norma Melchor Heart & Vascular Institute at El Camino Health, we’re experienced at assessing chest pain and delivering fast, seamless care. Our Mountain View campus has a 24/7 heart team that can perform emergency, minimally invasive percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures — also known as angioplasty and stenting — to treat heart attacks. We use the least invasive treatments to promote healing, limit complications, and reduce the time you spend in the hospital.
One of the key indicators of successful treatment is known as door-to-device time, or the time that elapses between when you arrive at the emergency department and when your doctor restores blood flow to your heart. El Camino Health’s door-to-device times are consistently less than 60 minutes — 30 minutes faster than the national standard of 90 minutes.
When seconds count, you can count on us.
A Swift, Systematic and Lifesaving Approach
The Chest Pain Center’s highly efficient process begins the moment you call 911. Our specialized team members are notified and ready to help the moment you arrive at the emergency department.
Our professionals have experience identifying and treating the most urgent kind of heart attack — an ST segment elevated myocardial infarction, or STEMI — which occurs when there’s a complete blockage of a blood vessel to the heart. When emergency responders perform an electrocardiogram (EKG) that indicates a STEMI heart attack, that information is sent to our emergency department. The STEMI team is activated and ready to respond when you arrive to assure you’re rapidly assessed and transported to the cardiac catheterization lab for immediate treatment.
This systematic approach allows us to provide care as quickly as possible in the early stages of a heart attack, when treatment is most effective. Emergency technicians, patient transport services, catheterization lab teams and interventional cardiologists all work together in a well-rehearsed process to provide the very best patient care — that’s why we’re able to exceed national door-to-treatment-time standards with the best outcomes.
In fact, we exceed national hospital averages for emergency heart attack treatment. When seconds count, you can count on us.
