TMH receives American Heart award

The program is being
implemented in hospitals around the country.

WARREN — Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital has received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Coronary Artery Disease Bronze Performance Achievement Award.

The award recognizes Trumbull Memorial’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of cardiac care that effectively improves treatment of patients hospitalized with coronary artery disease.

Patients are started on aggressive risk reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers in the hospital and receive smoking cessation/weight management counseling and referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before they are discharged.

The program is being implemented in hospitals around the country.

Hospitals that receive the GWTG-CAD Bronze Performance Achievement Award have demonstrated for at least 90 days that 85 percent of its eligible coronary patients, without contraindications, are discharged following the American Heart Association’s recommended treatment guidelines.

“The American Heart Association applauds Trumbull Memorial Hospital for its success in implementing the appropriate evidence-based care and protocols to reduce the number of recurrent events and deaths in cardiovascular disease patients,” said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Director of Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center. “TMH has achieved a high level of performance in terms of implementing these life-prolonging treatments.”

The American Heart Association’s GWTG-CAD program helps hospitals increase the use of and adherence to the association’s secondary prevention guidelines for coronary artery disease. Developed to assist health-care professionals follow proven standards and procedures before patients are discharged, GWTG-CAD can help Trumbull Memorial Hospital reduce the risk of recurrent heart attacks and death in treated patients.

The program, which works by mobilizing teams in acute care hospitals to implement American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology secondary prevention guidelines, was developed with support from an unrestricted educational grant from Merck & Co., Inc.

According to the American Heart Association, about 565,000 people suffer a new heart attack and 300,000 experience a recurrent heart attack every year. Statistics also show that within one year of a heart attack, 18 percent of men and 23 percent of women will die. Within five years after an attack, about 33 percent of men and 43 percent of women will die.