Introduction:

Since 1987, the incidence rate of hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction or fatal coronary artery disease in the United States has decreased by 4% to 5% per year. However, approximately 550,000 new episodes and 200,000 recurrent acute myocardial infarctions occur each year. Faced with this problem, the first comprehensive care program at the institutional level called «A todo corazón» was developed, which aims to strengthen actions to promote healthy habits, prevention and care of cardiovascular diseases.

Objective:

To determine mortality before and after the implementation of the infarction code in patients who presented acute myocardial infarction with ST segment elevation, in the Emergency Service of the Hospital General Regional No. 20 of the IMSS.

Material and methods:

A cross-sectional, descriptive, comparative and retrospective study was carried out to assess mortality in patients who a year before and a year after implementing the infarction code received medical attention in the emergency department. Sociodemographic variables, risk factors for AMI, AMI risk classification and severity, cardiac enzymes, gate-electrocardiogram time, gate-needle time, thrombolysis, reperfusion, and mortality were studied. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed with the mean difference test for quantitative variables and Mann-Whitney U for qualitative variables.

Results:

The electrocardiogram gate time was 125.93 minutes and 29.81 minutes (p < 0.001). The needle gate time was 186.56 ± and 83.17 minutes for the pre-code and post-code group, respectively (p < 0.001). The reperfusion rate was 41.7% in the pre-code group, while the post-code group obtained a 78.9% reperfusion rate. The mortality rate for both groups, where we found that it was 37.5% for the pre-code group and 21.1% for the post-code group.

Conclusions:

Subsequent to the implementation of the infarction code in a second level of care hospital, there were modifications with evidence of improvement in the approach, treatment and outcome of patients with AMI.