Establishing an Acute Aortic Treatment Center: Rapid patient transportation, diagnosis, and introduction of therapy by a dedicated multidisciplinary team can reduce the significant mortality of acute aortic syndromes.

There is increasing recognition of the need for expeditious care in a variety of life-threatening illnesses. Whereas rapidly getting a patient to an emergency room has long been associated with management of the critically ill trauma patient (“scoop and run,” “the golden hour”), there has been less emphasis on moving patients rapidly through the hospital after they arrive on site. It is the combination of increasingly efficient transportation to the hospital coupled with rapid diagnosis and emergent introduction of therapy that is currently being widely embraced.
Door-to-balloon times are now broadly documented, reported, and recognized as a quality marker for management of acute myocardial infarction. Likewise, early treatment of stroke has resulted in development of stroke centers where stroke recognition and early intervention are hallmarks of excellence. In our institution, acute stroke therapy and speed of recanalization for acute myocardial infarction have broken down administrative, processing, and physician barriers so that we can focus on reducing morbidity by streamlining transportation, diagnosis, and initiation of appropriate therapy. It is against this backdrop that we believe it is timely to focus these resources on rapid treatment of patients with acute aortic syndromes.