The WORST Place To Have A Heart Attack?

Why, A Hospital, But Of Course

"If you have a heart attack, you've got a better chance of receiving quick lifesaving treatment in a casino than in a hospital, a new study says.

Nearly a third of hospital patients whose heart stops beating do not get a potentially livesaving shock from a defibrillator within the recommended two minutes, according to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

And a cardiac patient's survival rate at a hospital is less than the 50% rate among people who collapse at casinos, airports and other locations where defibrillators are handy.

"It is probably fair to say that most patients assume - unfortunately, incorrectly - that a hospital would be the best place to survive a cardiac arrest," wrote Leslie Saxon of the University of Southern California in an editorial that accompanied the study.

The delays were often caused when patients admitted to hospitals for illnesses unrelated to a heart problems suffer a heart attack or when patients go into cardiac arrest between 5 p.m. and 8a.m. - a time when hospitals have fewer attendants on staff.

The risk of a delay increased by 23% for black patients and the study said further tests are needed to determine the reasons."

Since spending far too much time last year hospitalized amidst staffs of "gee you interrupted our do-nothing-all-day party"...

...From the ambulance drivers, who admittedly assisted in my return to full consciousness from all the laughing and grab ass that was going on in the meat truck, to the helpful hospital staff that grimaced at trying to transfer me to a bed and went from full frontal coax into half-ass demanding I depart the gurney and march to the bed because that'd be so much easier than lifting my oversized ass (hey, c'mon, get up, c'mon), to the nurses who asked if I remembered what meds I was supposed to get because it was hard reading someone else's writing when they could find it, to the housekeepers who opened the blinds and removed the curtains from around the bed and left the floor sopping wet, to the nurses aides who kept "borrowing" the wheelchairs never to return them, to my ex-personal physician who never showed up once to the house docs that graced my presence with momentary peek-ins then disappearing so quickly as to confound the great Houdini himself, to all of the above... I can with some degree of confidence say...

No wonder hospitals are where people go to die. Duh. And blacks die at a greater rate because being treated like unwanted chattel pisses them off more.