New machines in Wyoming Medical Center's emergency room allow providers to obtain pertinent lab results for patients with heart attack symptoms in 10 minutes instead of an hour.

And receive results at the bed side. And with only a drop of blood.

The ER purchased three hand-held i-STAT machines, which allow nurses and physicians to run certain tests on critical patients right there in the room. They do not have to wait for results from the main laboratory upstairs.

One patient, who was picked up in an ambulance this week with heart attack symptoms, went from the ambulance through the emergency room and to the heart catheter lab in 42 minutes because nurses did not have to wait for labs, said Patty Poe, nurse manager for the ER.

"It could have been one to three hours," said Amanda Parks, a registered nurse. "The lab won't like me for saying that."

Lab results can take several hours to return to the ER for a variety of reasons, Parks said. The lab produces results for the entire hospital, and even though it has a system for urgent labs, it does not always know which samples are the most urgent.

"They don't know the patient is down here hunched over with chest pains and is nauseous," Parks said. "They are just looking at tubes of blood."

With i-STAT, nurses obtain a blood sample, put a droplet on a special cartridge, insert it in the hand-held device, wait a few minutes and then print a receipt of the results.

Dr. Gene DuQuette, an emergency room physician, said quick lab results are critical for cardiac patients.

"With the heart, time is muscle," DuQuette said. "As soon as we can get the results, the better."

People, especially women and diabetics, can have normal electrocardiograms, but still be having a heart attack, DuQuette said. For these people, doctors must rely on lab results.

The ER implemented the system about two and a half months ago, although the Life Flight program has used it for about a year.

Currently, nurses use i-STAT for only cardiac patients and critical patients who need comprehensive metabolic panels. The metabolic panel tests blood sugars, kidneys and liver functions.

DuQuette said the cartridges used for each test are expensive so the hospital does not use them on stable patients who can wait for labs to return.

The three machines cost about $23,000 altogether, Poe said. Results are accurate, and nurses have done well learning how to use the machines, which cannot run results if loaded improperly, bumped during processing or provided a sample with air bubbles.

Poe said WMC nurses have only a 7 percent error rate, while hospitals usually have an 11 to 15 percent error rate when they first use i-STAT. An error means the machine was unable to process the results the first time.

"It shows how diligent our nurses have been at getting this done," Poe said.

Nurses do not want i-STAT taken away from them or their patients, Parks said.

Contact health reporter Allison Rupp at (307) 266-0534 or allison.rupp@trib.com.