ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Heart attack deaths have remained the same, even as hospital teams have gotten faster at treating heart attack patients with emergency angioplasty, according to a study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.
Hospitals across the country have successfully raced to reduce so-called door-to-balloon time, the time it takes patients arriving at hospitals suffering from a heart attack to be treated with angioplasty, to 90 minutes or less in the belief that it would save heart muscle and lives.