Document resource
Background and objective Chest pain is a common reason for Emergency Medical Service calls for help with most patients receiving an emergency ambulance response. Patients may be suffering from a range of conditions; from a life-threatening event to low risk conditions that could be appropriately managed in the community. This retrospective cohort study analysed ambulance service chest pain data to understand the demographics and Emergency Medical Service outcomes for patients presenting to a regional ambulance service and triaged as suffering with chest pain.Methods and analysis The study took place in an Emergency Medical Service in the South West of the UK. Two years of data were included where patients were triaged as suffering with chest pain and who received a face-to-face Emergency Medical Service attendance. Descriptive statistics were used to interpret patient demographics, Emergency Medical Service response times, triage at the time of the call, ambulance staff provisional diagnosis, specialist pre-hospital critical care attendance, conveyance decision-making, incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and recontact rate.Results We report 140,807 individual incidents (9% of all face-to-face contacts) where the patient was triaged as suffering with chest pain and where there was an Emergency Medical Service attendance. Most patients (98.4%) received a Category Two response. Conveyance to hospital rate was 80.1% and 37% of patients were provisionally diagnosed as suffering a cardiac complaint. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occurred in 0.2% of patients.Conclusion Patients triaged as suffering with chest pain and attended by Emergency Medical Services make up 9% of all Emergency Medical Service attendances. Data indicates that this group of patients are provisionally diagnosed with a multitude of conditions and that a small proportion deteriorate into OHCA. Our data supports ongoing efforts by UK Emergency Medical Services to improve the initial triage of this patient group to respond appropriately first time.