2008 - Heart Attack Care
A heart attack (also called an acute myocardial infarction or AMI) happens when arteries leading to the heart become blocked and the blood supply is slowed or stopped. The Hospital Results at the link below show how often hospitals provided the recommended care for heart attack patients.
What do the fractions mean?
The denominator (the bottom number) represents all those patients who were medically eligible to receive the treatment. The numerator (the top number) represents those patients who actually received the treatment.
For example: Aspirin at Arrival: 80%; 8/10 means that 10 heart attack patients were medically eligible to receive an aspirin on arrival at the hospital, and 8 of those patients (80%) actually received it. “0/0” means that no patients were medically eligible to receive the treatment.
Be careful when drawing conclusions; small numbers of patients may reduce the reliability of the results.