[A heart attack: was the patient lucky or unlucky? Circumstances

Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd · Jan 2012

Case Reports

[A heart attack: was the patient lucky or unlucky? Circumstances were favourable but outcome ill-fated].

The assessment of signs and symptoms in primary care is an important but difficult task for general practitioners (GPs) who have to decide whether symptoms require immediate action or rather a watchful waiting approach. However, the GP may sometimes just need a bit of luck. This case report describes how the doctor's luck (in taking the initiative to phone the patient shortly after discharge from a hospital where he had undergone surgery on two coronary vessels) and the luck of the patient (a subsequent cardiac arrest at the GP's office) results in an unsuccessful out-of-hospital resuscitation. Based on our analysis of the literature on the prevalence of cardiac arrests and the outcome of out-of-hospital resuscitation, we will leave it up to the readers to decide whether our patient had been lucky or unlucky.

read more… or not…
- Tim C olde Hartman, Hiske van Ravesteijn, and Peter L Lucassen.
- UMC St Radboud, afd. Eerstelijnsgeneeskunde, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. t.oldehartman@elg.umcn.nl
- Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2012 Jan 1;156(51):A5717.
AbstractThe assessment of signs and symptoms in primary care is an important but difficult task for general practitioners (GPs) who have to decide whether symptoms require immediate action or rather a watchful waiting approach. However, the GP may sometimes just need a bit of luck. This case report describes how the doctor's luck (in taking the initiative to phone the patient shortly after discharge from a hospital where he had undergone surgery on two coronary vessels) and the luck of the patient (a subsequent cardiac arrest at the GP's office) results in an unsuccessful out-of-hospital resuscitation. Based on our analysis of the literature on the prevalence of cardiac arrests and the outcome of out-of-hospital resuscitation, we will leave it up to the readers to decide whether our patient had been lucky or unlucky.

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[A heart attack: was the patient lucky or unlucky? Circumstances were favourable but outcome ill-fated].

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