Many heart attack victims driving to hospital: study

"Crushing chest pain? This may not be the smartest time to climb in the car and zoom down the expressway. A new study found about 40 per cent of heart attack victims in a large, urban Canadian city drove themselves to hospital in the midst of a heart attack, risking delays in diagnosis and potentially life-saving treatments to restore blood flow to dying heart muscle. 'We're talking about patients who have full-blown, severe pain, yet they're trying to find their own way to the hospital,' says Dr. Madhu Natarajan, an interventional cardiologist and co-director of the cardiac catheterization labs at Hamilton Health Sciences. 'They are committing a mistake with potentially grave consequences'" - Calgary Herald