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 the guidelines now say to call 911 if there's no relief 5 minutes after just ONE dose. Of course, the idea is to get MI patients treated earlier and improve survival...but this hasn't been definitely proven. This new recommendation is level C...based on expert consensus.

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