How many doses of sublingual nitroglycerin should a patient take for chest pain before calling 911
November 2005
How many doses of sublingual nitroglycerin should a patient take for chest pain before calling 911?
Most of us were taught to recommend taking one SL NTG every 5 minutes...and call 911 if there's no relief after the THIRD dose.
But guidelines now say to call 911 if there's no relief within 5 minutes after just ONE dose. The idea is to get heart attack patients treated earlier and to improve survival...but this benefit hasn't been proven yet.
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