This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Revascularization  • Cardiovascular System  • Surgery  • Surgical Interventions  • Cardiovascular/ Cardiothoracic Surgery  • Cardiovascular Disease/ Myocardial Infarction  • Cardiovascular Intervention  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: The study by Dr Schömig and colleagues¹ of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients presenting more than 12 hours after acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is methodologically flawed because it does not report data that would distinguish delayed presentation after the onset of cardiac ischemia without infarction vs the actual onset of myocardial infarction (MI). The study used minimal entry criteria of a single episode of chest pain lasting at least 20 minutes, occurring more than 12 hours before presentation, along with electrocardiographic changes at presentation. On this basis, some of the study patients could have had an infarction less than 12 hours old.

Delayed presentation of patients with MI should have been determined by an increase in the patient’s cardiac injury biomarkers (eg, troponin and creatine kinase-MB) at the time of study entry, since the biomarkers increase no later than 12 hours after an infarction, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Stanley A. Rubin, MD
sarubin@ucla.edu

Alberta L. Warner, MD
Department of Cardiology
Veterans Administration–University of California Los Angeles
Medical Program
Los Angeles

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Mechanical Reperfusion More Than 12 Hours After Acute Myocardial Infarction
Balavenkatesh Kanna and Rami Almadi
JAMA. 2005;294(16):2031.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Mechanical Reperfusion More Than 12 Hours After Acute Myocardial Infarction—Reply
Albert Schömig, Gjin Ndrepepa, and Adnan Kastrati
JAMA. 2005;294(16):2031-2032.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT