Brian Doerner, drummer with the rock band Saga, was feeling unusually tired and hungry the day after a gig so he decided to scarf down some fast food and have a nap.
But, as he bit into an onion ring, his left arm went numb and he began sweating profusely - classic signs of a heart attack. Doerner's spouse, who initially thought he was joking, called 911.
Within minutes of that fateful call last October, firefighters arrived at his Kitchener home and administered oxygen. Next came the paramedics. They removed Doerner's shirt and attached 10 wires to his chest to get an electrocardiogram reading.
The results were then sent electronically to a cardiologist at St. Mary's General Hospital, (Canada) who received the readings almost instantly. The cardiologist, scanning the readings on a BlackBerry, knew immediately Doerner was suffering a ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), a heart attack caused by a blockage in an artery, and ordered emergency surgery.
As the paramedics bundled him into an ambulance, a surgical suite was prepared and the 49-year-old drummer was delivered directly to the operating room, bypassing the emergency department.
"When I arrived, there was a whole crew waiting for me. I felt like King Fahd," Doerner said.
He underwent angioplasty - an operation in which a catheter is threaded into the groin and up into the heart, where a balloon is inflated to clear the blocked artery. A stent (a wire mesh tube that props open the blood vessel) was inserted.
From the time the call went to 911 to the beginning of the operation, only 77 minutes had passed.
Since they began using the BlackBerry to send ECG readings, the so-called door-to-balloon has been as low as 36 minutes.
Dr. Suzanne Renner, an interventional cardiologist at St. Mary's, said that when a person suffers a heart attack, "time is (heart) muscle, so the focus is always time. You want to get the artery open as quickly and efficiently as possible."
