Urgent care clinic or emergency room? Heart attack
A heart attack is a serious medical condition that if not handled with the efficiency and urgency required, may prove fatal. With this in mind, you need to have the best professionals addressing the situation and this calls for a visit to an ER where you will get the best possible medical care. While some may point to urgent care clinics as an alternative, these simply don’t offer the extensive service and dedicated diagnosis that ERs offer. This stands as one of the biggest advantage you can look towards especially when faced with a heart attack and it is why frontlineer.com stands tall in emergency medical service delivery. In the case of a heart attack, is it an urgent care clinic or an emergency room that will serve you better?
Urgent care clinics
Urgent care clinics are equipped to handle less serious illnesses and in most cases they include the conditions that are not life threatening. With a heart attack, risking it with an urgent care clinic will only rack up the bills for you since you will eventually get referred to an ER for more advanced care and monitoring. As a walk-in facility, an urgent care clinic is set to handle sprains, allergies, infections, colds, strains, coughs, rashes and other mild health issues that need to be treated within a 24-hour period. This is the defining setting for ERs since they have the capacity to handle the extreme situations that urgent care clinics can’t. with a heart attack, you need the best professionals and the best equipment at hand to give you a fighting chance and urgent care clinics simply don’t offer you this option.
Emergency rooms
As noted earlier, a heart attack is a serious condition that needs emergency treatment and constant monitoring to ensure full recovery and this is where ERs play a hug role. At frontlineer.com for instance, an emergency situation that leans on the side of a heart attack is handled with utmost professionalism and every test is done to ensure the patient is given the top medical treatment. An ER is always prepared to handle major medical situations as opposed to an urgent care clinic which is mostly reactive in nature in terms of treatment of the varied medical conditions that may be brought to their doors. An ER is always set to handle cases of serious injuries, heart attack, breathing difficulties, loss of consciousness, bleeding, broken bones, head injuries, poisonings and trauma care and its quite telling that most of these conditions are not treatable at urgent care clinics.
Heart attack symptoms necessitating an ER visit
Discomfort and squeezing pain in center of chest
Medical professionals have noted that discomfort and squeezing pain in the center of the chest is an early sign of a heart attack. Visiting an ER immediately stands as the best course of action to ensure that you have a better chance of having the heart attack diagnosed and prevented.
Unexplained shortness of breath
Shortness of breath can come from varied strenuous activities but an unexplained bout of the same should definitely be given close attention.
Lightheadedness
As much as this may be a sign of multiple other medical conditions; frontlineer.com, which is a top ER facility, notes that lightheadedness coupled with the other aforementioned symptoms points to an impending heart attack.
What will be done for you at an ER
Get information on family history
As opposed to an urgent care clinic where a straightforward look at the symptoms will inform the course of treatment, an ER visit for a heart attack will see a look into your family history to understand the possible causal factors.
Review of past medical tests
Apart from the multiple extensive tests that will be done at an ER, the results of your past medical tests will also be brought into focus to better understand the health trajectory that your body is exhibiting.
Review of medications and supplements
Before the commencement of a treatment plan, all past and current medications and supplements that you have taken will be brought to focus to better grasp what has been the risk factor associated with the heart attack.
Check through the list of chronic health conditions
As captured by frontlineer.com which is one of the best ER facilities in the US, any predisposing factor that may have led to the heart attack must be identified and this is where a review of the chronic health conditions comes in.
Physical exam
A physical exam is important as it reveals any contributing element that may have impacted your health to the point that you suffer a heart attack.
Perform an electrocardiogram
This is where the facilities of an ER prove to be the differentiating factor since not many urgent care clinics even have the capacity to do an electrocardiogram to diagnose a heart attack.
Electrocardiographic monitoring
Only a fully equipped ER like frontlineer.com will have the necessary equipment and experts to perform electrocardiographic monitoring that screens abnormal heart rhythms and helps in the planning of a treatment program.
Perform blood tests
Few medical facilities have the capacity to perform blood tests that look to diagnose a heart attack and an ER is one of the best when it comes to that.
Oxygen
At an ER, you can be sure of receiving oxygen to replenish the starved muscles and in addition to this, you are also offered medication that include clot-busting drugs and nitroglycerin to restore flow.
The bottom line
An emergency room is by far the best medical facility to visit when you are faced with a heart attack as opposed to an urgent care clinic. Your chances of treatment and full recovery are higher with an ER of the quality and efficiency of frontlineer.com at your service. What’s more? You get to be given advice by licensed and experienced physicians on risk factors and lifestyle habits including dietary options.
