When a 60-year-old man with chest pains arrived at the emergency room of Hadassah Hospital-Ein Kerem, Dr. Haim Danenberg, Director of Interventional Cardiology, quickly diagnosed a heart attack. Although Hadassah’s catheterization laboratory is open around the clock, he could not, however, begin treatment until he made a call to the patient’s rabbi to receive consent for the percutaneous coronary intervention procedure (PCI).
“Medicine needs to function within the cultural climate of the area,” Dr. Danenberg says. “We work within the holiness and uniqueness of Jerusalem.”
Because the laboratory is open 24 hours a day, all patients have access to advanced cardiac procedures. It takes an average of 30 minutes for a patient to get from Hadassah’s emergency room to the catheterization laboratory.
