Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) guidelines recommend an emergency medical services (EMS) first medical contact (FMC) to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) time of ≤90 min. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the association between FMC to PCI time and mortality in rural STEMI patients. ⋯ Death among rural patients with STEMI was four times more likely when they did not receive PCI within 90 min.
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Clinical prediction models are created to help clinicians with medical decision making, aid in risk stratification, and improve diagnosis and/or prognosis. With growing availability of both prehospital and in-hospital observational registries and electronic health records, there is an opportunity to develop, validate, and incorporate prediction models into clinical practice. However, many prediction models have high risk of bias due to poor methodology. ⋯ There are eight steps that should be followed when developing and internally validating a prediction model: (1) problem definition, (2) coding of predictors, (3) addressing missing data, (4) ensuring adequate sample size, (5) variable selection, (6) evaluating model performance, (7) internal validation, and (8) model presentation. Subsequent steps include external validation, assessment of impact, and cost-effectiveness. By following these steps, researchers can develop a prediction model with the methodological rigor and quality required for prehospital and EM research.