Yet a study of nearly 100,000 patients published in 2013 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that shorter “door-to-balloon” times—the period from a patient’s hospital presentation to inflation of a balloon to restore coronary blood flow—did not improve in-hospital survival. The median door-to-balloon time dropped to sixty-seven minutes, from eighty-three, in the period studied, but short-term death rates did not change.
