According to The Post-Bulletin, Andy McMonigle, a 48-year-old male nurse at the clinic, felt a pounding sensation in his arm on Feb. 23 after cycling. With a history of heart trouble, McMonigle asked a nearby man for help. Fortunately for McMonigle, that man was Dr. Daniel Lueders, an internal medicine resident at the clinic, and he was joined minutes later by Dr. Christopher DeSimone and Dr. Daniel DeSimone.
Lueders was said to have grabbed his iPad from his rucksack and connected to the Mayo EMR to quickly review McMonigle’s medical history. The doctors compared his symptoms with his medical history, concluded that he had a blockage in his stent, and were able to quickly get hold of some Aspirin and a simple drug to thin the blood.
Using the iPad to view the EKG record in side-by-side format, and with a strip that the ambulance crew had printed, doctors were happy with their evaluation and sent the patient to the cardiac catherization lab for the clot to be removed. The team also activated an emergency code so that a medical team would be ready on McMonigle’s arrival, and it’s not known if this was done via the iPad.
The decision looks to have saved McMonigle’s life; the doctors say traditional tests for heart attacks can take up to three hours. “If we were to say, go to the ER, the first test would have come back negative. He would have waited at least three hours,” said Dr. Daniel DeSimone, when speaking to The Post-Bulletin.
Having been admitted on Thursday, McMonigle was discharged on Sunday.
A recent report stated that the iPad should not be used for clinical diagnosis. Do you think otherwise?
This article originally published at TabTimes here.
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