An ecological study on relationship between emergency response timeand mortality statistics for cardiovascular disease

2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23659252
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Medical sociology
• Research Institution: University of Niigata Prefecture
• Principal Investigator: TANABE Naohito 新潟県立大学, 人間生活学部, 教授 (40270938)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SAITO Reiko 新潟大学, 医歯学系, 教授 (30345524) ; KIMURA Yoshinari 大阪市立大学, 文学研究科, 准教授 (20570641)
• Project Period (FY): 2011 – 2012
• Keywords: 疫学

Research Abstract

We retrospectively analyzed the response time of emergency teams(EmAT) in Niigata City according to geographical distribution using 25,713 ambulancerecords for 2007 and 2008. When these data were compared to the area-specific mortalitystatistics, we found that the risk of mortality from cerebrovascular disease (CbrVD) washigh in areas where emergency response teams took a long time to transfer patients tohospitals. Subsequently, we selected 1043 stroke cases from all ambulance records for oursimulation study. In Niigata City, there are 9 major emergency hospitals for strokemanagement. We presumed that patients who experienced stroke would be admitted to anyof these hospitals and thus calculated the estimated EmAT (eEmAT) for transfer to eachhospital. When 22 areas in Niigata City were classified into 4 groups on the basis of eEmAT,the average eEmAT in the area-group with the longest eEmAT was higher by 12 minutesthan that for the area-group with the shortest eEmAT. This disparity could be reduced byan average of 4.5 minutes if an additional major hospital would be established in the areaswith the longest eEmAT, which could result in the reduction of CbrVD-related mortalityrates by 20%.