Impact of door-to-ECG time on morbidity and mortality of patients with chest pain referred to emergency department

This review study aims to investigate the impact of reducing Door-to-ECG (DTE) time on on morbidity and mortality of patients with chest pain referred to emergency department.

Chest pain is the second most common reason for referral to an emergency unit. According to American Heart Association, all patients with chest pain presenting to the emergency ward should be approached with an ECG within 10 minutes of entrance to the emergency department. This is considered as the first line of diagnostic tests for myocardial infarction.

In this narrative review study, several databases and search engines including SID, Pub Med, Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus were used to find the articles published between 2000 and 2018. The keywords used to search articles were “Door to ECG”, “chest pain”, “emergency unit” and “triage”. The articles selected for review were interventional or descriptive in terms of design, in Persian or English, with available full text. The criterion for selecting articles was the similarity of the their subject with the search keywords including Door to ECG (DTE) time and triage and their value in the early diagnosis and treatment of coronary disorders.

A total of 20 articles were found. After removing the articles that didn’t meet the inclusion criteria, 11 articles related to the subject of the study remained in review. The significant outcomes of timely triage, appropriate time to perform ECG, barriers to access and suggestions for faster treatment by the system especially the role of nurses, were investigated.

The reduction of triage time and Door to ECG (DTE) time as well as the role of the nurse in those cases are associated with a reduction in the morbidity and mortality of cardiac patients.