Twenty-one GPs in Co Donegal will soon be able to administer a specialist drug treatment aimed at reducing the number of fatalities from heart attacks.
The GPs in remote parts of the county are to receive training and specialist equipment to administer clot-dissolving drugs. These are most effective if used within 90 minutes of the onset of an attack.
The GPs have been selected as part of a pilot project run by the North Western Health Board. This is the latest phase of the Donegal Pre-Hospital Emergency Cardiac Care Project, which was set up in 1992 and has concentrated on equipping all the county's ambulances with defibrillators (which apply an electric current to the heart).
About half of all GP surgeries in the county have also been supplied with defibrillators, and it is hoped to extend this to every practice in the county.
The director of the project, Dr John Dowling, said the long distances ambulances had to travel in Co Donegal to get patients to hospital meant such early interventions were particularly important.
In addition, 5,000 people in the general community have also been trained in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Dr Dowling said the project had already been proved to be successful. A survey of 22 patients who had survived heart attacks found that initial resuscitation was performed by members of the public in nine cases. The remainder received resuscitation either in an ambulance or GP's surgery.
All 22 had to be defibrillated before admission to hospital, and would not have survived without this treatment.
All of the 22 people were still alive six months after the heart attack. By 1998, six years after the start of the project, 16 of the 22 were still alive, with most enjoying a good quality of life.
Clot-dissolving or thrombolytic drugs, if administered within 90 minutes of a heart attack, have also been shown to reduce both fatalities and long-term complications, Dr Dowling said.
The 21 GPs selected for the project come from seven areas at least 30 minutes' drive from Letterkenny General Hospital.
At a conference in Bundoran tomorrow and on Thursday the methods used in the project will be discussed by international experts including Professor Stig Holmberg from Sweden and Dr John Rawles, who successfully introduced a thrombolytic drug treatment scheme in the Grampian region of Scotland.