Capital Health Medical Center – Hopewell is the first hospital in the Mercer/Bucks County Region to receive full accreditation with PCI as a Chest Pain Center three consecutive times from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC) and the American College of Cardiology.
The Chest Pain Center at Capital Health Medical Center – Hopewell manages heart attacks with increased speed, resulting in quicker, and more complete, recovery for patients.
Because heart attacks can be identified quicker, care is also delivered quicker. And, since muscle cells are dying, faster diagnosis and treatment means critical heart muscle can be saved. It also means patients with symptoms of concern who are not having heart attacks can be cared for faster, getting them back to their lives.
Capital Health cardiologists and emergency room physicians, nurses, and clinicians, have worked together to speed up the triage and evaluation process and get testing done faster. The Chest Pain Center is part of our comprehensive cardiology services, which you can learn more about here.
Patients arriving at the emergency room with any heart attack symptom trigger a Chest Pain Alert. Team members mobilize immediately to quickly assess the patient, conduct testing, and determine if acute intervention is needed. The most serious heart attacks are immediately taken to the cardiac catheterization laboratory where a life-saving stent may be placed into the blocked heart artery.
The Center uses innovative bedside blood tests for troponin, a protein that enters the blood stream during heart attack. This increases the rapidity with which results are available. The very sensitive tests used at Capital Health also detect troponin levels earlier, and combined with other tests identify a heart attack quicker.
Patients diagnosed with heart attack are immediately treated. Patients who are not having an acute event may need further testing that can be performed during their stay or soon after their ED visit as an outpatient.
All patients receive information to help reduce their future risk and education about symptoms that may be the early sign of a heart attack.
Signs or symptoms of a heart attack? Call 9-1-1.