Vivian Robins said her worst nightmare was realized Sunday evening when a loose pitbull attacked and killed her nine-pound terrier, Lola, outside her apartment building near 24th Street and Avenue A.“we just closed the door to go outside and then this pitbull lunged at Lola and started thrashing her back and forth in its mouth as Lola cried in agony,” Robins said through tears. “And then this second pitbull started to circle around as if it was trying to prevent someone from interfering.”While Lola was being attacked, Robins said she jumped on the pitbull’s back in an attempt to save her dog.“I was pounding on him and grabbing his jaw to try and open it, but he wouldn’t let go. he was just too strong,” she said.after a brief struggle, a passerby, Cecilia Tobar, noticed the commotion and came to Robins’ assistance.The two women eventually freed Lola and a relative of Robins’ transported the severely injured pet to a local veterinary clinic, but it was too late.“Lola meant everything to me. she was my support animal; my precious companion who kept me from being sad,” Robins said. “And now I have lost her.”both women received minor bite wounds during the incident and were treated and released from Yuma Regional Medical Center.The attack on Lola was the final in a series of three episodes involving the two pitbulls Sunday evening, according to the Yuma Police Department.“The male and female pitbulls, (who belong to Amber Hughes, 28, of Yuma) escaped from a home on the 800 block of East 24th Street by digging a hole under the fence,” said YPD spokesman Sgt. Clint Norred. “they then went to a nearby housing unit and attacked a chihuahua. The owners of the chihuahua were nearby and they were able to save it, although the dog did suffer some injuries.”after attacking the chihuahua, Norred said the two dogs then chased after an unidentified woman who was walking nearby. she was able to reach the safety of her apartment unharmed. The attack on Lola was the third episode, before the city’s Animal Control Services and YPD officers captured the dogs later that evening without further incident, Norred said.The two pitbulls are now quarantined for 10 days at the Humane Society of Yuma while being watched for symptoms of rabies.Norred said charges of dogs at large and license violations were submitted to the city prosecutor and are currently under investigation.Darren DaRonco can be reached at (928) 539-6857 or ddaronco@yumasun.com. you can follow him on Twitter @YSDarrend or on Facebook at faceboook.com/YSDarrenD.

Sentara Cardiovascular Research Institute announced it is one of 35 heart centers in the U.S. involved in clinical trials studying the safety and efficacy of a heart monitor designed to warn patients of an impending heart attack. Riverside Regional Medical Center has been a part of the trial since 2009.

The trial involves implanting a device, called the AngelMed Guardian, just under the skin in a patient’s chest with wires connected to the heart. Smaller than a flip phone, the device is designed to monitor the heart for changes indicating it’s not getting enough oxygen. If something’s wrong, it will alert the patient by sending a wireless message to a pager-like device carried by the patient. that way, the patient can get to the hospital faster.

“The first few minutes of a heart attack are most dangerous, and every minute lost means more damage to the heart muscle. This study is designed to help our cardiac patients who are at high risk of having another heart attack improve their chances of survival. The hope is for them to get a warning even before symptoms occur,” says cardiologist Allen Ciuffo, M.D., principal investigator at Sentara Cardiovascular Research Institute.

One of every six deaths in the U.S. is due to heart disease, and 50 percent of heart attack deaths occur within one hour of symptoms or before the patient reaches the hospital, according to the American Heart Association. Other studies have shown that most damage to the heart occurs within two hours of blood flow being blocked from the heart muscle.

Find more health news at dailypress.com/health.

A Riverside patient holds an AngelMed device.

Image of the AngelMed device implanted in a Riverside patient’s chest.

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 January 2011, 18:36 CST

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — It’s a visual that anyone who has watched TV in the last ten years would recognize: sirens blaring, ambulance wheels screeching to a stop, paramedics speeding an occupied gurney toward the emergency room doors. The scene has played out hundreds of times on screens throughout Southern California. Yet for most patients, their experience in the emergency room is decidedly different.

Because hospital emergency rooms see patients with a wide variety of conditions, they must use a process called triage that ensures patients with the most serious or life-threatening conditions are taken first for evaluation and treatment. for instance, people who have shortness of breath, chest pain or stroke symptoms may be seen before other patients. most emergency rooms aim to take patients to a treatment room as quickly as possible. but the reality is that during busier hours, there may be a longer wait to see a doctor if a patient’s condition is not life-threatening. Lakewood Regional Medical Center is taking an innovative approach to try and change that. It puts patients in control of where–and how long–they wait to be seen in the emergency room.

Getting InQuickER

A new emergency room online reservation service (LakewoodER.com) is available at Lakewood Regional Medical Center. for a small fee of $14.99, it will allow patients to make a reservation for an emergency room visit, just as they would book a table at a restaurant through OpenTable.com. Called InQuickER, the service enables patients with truly non-emergent conditions to avoid lengthy waits in the emergency room, opting instead to wait for their appointment in the comfort of home. for a small fee, patients can make an appointment usually for an hour and a half or two hours in advance–the same amount of time they might have spent had they just shown up at an emergency room. Through the InQuickER 15-Minute Guarantee, patients are assured that they will be seen by a health care professional within 15 minutes of their scheduled appointment, or their booking fee will be refunded. InQuickER not only offers unprecedented convenience for patients, but allows them to minimize the contact they have with other sick patients in the Emergency Department waiting room.

“With the hospital emergency room closures in our area, the ones who remain open are becoming overcrowded, resulting in longer wait times,” states emergency room physician Bruce Jetton, MD. “And the economy is also contributing to crowded emergency rooms; we are seeing a higher number of patients without insurance who use the emergency room as their means of medical service. We are committed to providing best and most prompt service possible and we are putting some things in place to give hospital emergency room patients options and information. The emergency room wait time clock on lakewoodregional.com and the InQuickER reservation service are some examples of this.”

Non-emergent patients also have the option to choose how long they are willing to wait in Lakewood’s emergency room. since December, Lakewood Regional has been posting actual wait times on its website for patients coming into its emergency room. The wait times are updated every five minutes and give patients a two-hour rolling average on the time it takes after a patient’s arrival to be escorted into a treatment room. The wait time averages give patients “real time” expectations on how quickly they can be seen after they choose to come to Lakewood’s emergency room.

Lakewood Regional’s emergency room is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year by Board-certified emergency physicians and nurses. It treats over 37,000 patients a year, is fully accredited and equipped to provide state-of-the-art emergency care. In 2010, Lakewood was designated by Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services as a STEMI Receiving Center for the care of cardiac patients. Hospitals earn this designation by providing close communication between paramedics, emergency specialists and cardiologists and rapid treatment for heart attack patients when they arrive in the Emergency Department. Studies have proven that STEMI Receiving Centers provide the best chances for survival when patients suffer a heart attack.

There is never a convenient time for an emergency, but Lakewood Regional is making the experience less stressful by providing more options to emergency room patients. By putting “me” back into emergency care, Lakewood is helping patients discover that patience doesn’t always have to be tested in the emergency room.

SOURCE Lakewood Regional Medical Center

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