European Heart Journal Advance Access published online on March 30, 2007
European Heart Journal, doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehm045
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© The European Society of Cardiology 2007. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Fibrinolysis may widen the time window for primary angioplasty
1 Pozna
University School of Medical Sciences, Cardiac and Rehabilitation Hospital Kowanówko, ul. Sanatoryjna 34, 64600 Kowanówko k/Obornik Wlkp. Poland
2 Department of Interventional Cardiology, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland
* Corresponding author. Tel: +48 602217202; fax: +48 612977500. E-mail address: tomasz.siminiak@usoms.poznan.pl
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
This editorial refers to Primary angioplasty vs. early routine post-fibrinolysis angioplasty for acute myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation: the Gracia 2 non-inferiority, randomized, controlled trial by F. Fernandez-Aviles et al.
Recently published clinical trials have demonstrated superiority of primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) over lysis in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) treatment. Current practice guidelines1 have established PPCI as a preferred method of reperfusion in STEMI, as long as it can be performed within 90 min from patient's first medical contact. However, in the majority of cases achieving this 90 min time goal proves impossible, mainly because the STEMI care is not streamlined enough between different levels and components of health care system. Accordingly, the optimization of treatment strategy in STEMI patients, who for one reason or another exceed the 90 min delay, is one of the hottest topics in cardiology today. The GRACIA-2 study is certainly an important contribution to