Saturday, 11 April 2015

April 6th Management of NSTEMI

On Easter Monday we talked about a patient I saw with an NSTEMI who was admitted for pancreatitis.

NSTEMI doesn't seem to get the same attention as STEMI among medical students probably because it doesn't sound as sexy. However it can be a more challenging problem because its difficult to assess who will go to a full on STEMI or who will perfuse that coronary artery.

We use the TIMI score to classify patients in terms of high, medium or low risk: chance of reoccurance MI or death at 14 days.

Management:
Make sure we have good IV access, put the patient on a monitor, consider CCU consult.

Aspirin, plavix, heparin and usually beta blocker are standard therapy. I will email out a presentation out on this as it is obviously alot more complicated.

Note: ticagrelor was superior to plavix in the relatively recent PLATO trial. Interesting, ticagrelor doesn't need to be metabolized before it gets active, potentially some patients were that to be slow metabolizers of plavix. 

When to take patient to cath asap? 
arrhythmia's
Heart failure
non-resolving chest pain
new murmur possibly suggesting ischemia to papillary muscle of mitral valve

As per the TIMCS trial, there was benefit in high risk patient – went to cath in 24 hours


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