4 per 1 000 inhabitants per year of acutely ill patients with chest pain or suspected acute myocardial infarction was found. In a previous study [1] we presented data from three EMCCs after gathering information on every situation that was triaged as a red response, according to the JNK inhibitor clinical trial Norwegian Index of Medical Emergencies. The study showed that 90% of the red responses were medical problems with a large variation of symptoms, the remainder being accidents. Severity of illness was classified retrospectively,

and showed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that 70% of the patients were not in a life-threatening situation. The aim of the present analyses was to obtain representative data on the epidemiology of acute chest pain outside the hospitals in Norway, by a more detailed investigation of the data from our EMCC study. Methods Three EMCCs, located at Haugesund, Stavanger and Innlandet hospitals, were involved in the study, with the three Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical corresponding districts covering 816 000 inhabitants (18% of the total Norwegian population). Data were collected Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical prospectively from October 1 to December 31 2007. Variables All 19 EMCCs in Norway use a software system called Acute Medical Information System (AMIS) to record all incoming cases. Usage of the AMIS results in an electronic form with registration of each incident

(not the individual patient). The AMIS form contains information about the incident, the patient (or patients, if more than one patient is involved in the incident) and all available logistics, including date, time of day, and to where the patients are transported (“left at scene”, home, casualty clinic,

hospital). Prehospital response time is also registered, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical defined as the time period from when the caller calls 113 until the nearest available ambulance reaches the patient [9,10]. Based on the immediate available information, the EMCC operator (usually a specially trained Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical nurse) gives the incident one clinical criteria code and one response level according to the Index [6]. The Index is based on ideas from the Criteria Based Dispatch system in the US [11], and was first published in 1994. It categorises clinical PD184352 (CI-1040) symptoms, findings and incidents into 39 chapters, and each chapter is subdivided into a red, yellow and green criteria based section, correlating to the appropriate level of response. Red colour is defined as an “acute” response, with the highest priority, and will trigger the transmission of a radio alarm to both the primary care doctor on-call and the ambulance service. Yellow colour is defined as an “urgent” response, with a high, but lower priority, where the patient should be examined as soon as the doctor-on-call is available. Green colour is defined as a “non-urgent” response, with the lowest priority. Chapter 10 in the Index covers the symptom “Chest pain”, and usage of the red response section will result in the code A10 – Chest pain (A for “acute”).