Heart Attacks need not kill 600,000 Americans each year. It does so because we allow it to be a crashing illness . Citizens actually wait until symptoms are emergency enough to go into the emergency room. We know full well that half of these deaths are preventable in that there are tell tale signals that a heart attack is on its way. Fifty percent of patients with heart attacks have a history of stuttering chest symptoms before they crash.
Patients literally wait until it becomes emergency enough before going into the emergency room.
We should learn from these histories taken from patients with heart attacks and appreciate that heart attacks have beginnings and that intervention early can actually prevent the heart attack from taking place, preventing death and damage to the heart muscle. There are many other reasons why patients don't come in to the hospital early. In many instances the chest discomfort comes and goes allowing the patients to deceive themselves. Such patients do not feel it is emergency enough to call 911 and most importantly first responders do not act because they usually have a busy schedule and taking time would interfere with that schedule. The end result is that responders become more enablers than caregivers .