Dr. Raymond D. Bahr is the Medical Director of The Paul Dudley White Coronary Care System at St. Agnes HealthCare, Baltimore, Maryland.

After receiving his degree, Dr. Bahr served on the boards of directors of the Maryland Society of Cardiology, the American College of Physicians and the Baltimore Critical Care Society. He has served as chairman of the Emergency Cardiac Care Committee of the American Heart Association, Maryland Affiliate.

He retains memberships in the Maryland Society of Internal Medicine, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Cardiology. He is past president of the Maryland Society of Cardiology. He serves as an instructor at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1981 at St. Agnes Hospital, Dr. Bahr established the Chest Pain Emergency Department (CPED), the first such unit in the world. The initial purpose of this CPED was prompt, and effective treatment of patients presenting with heart attack/sudden death. The CPED was coupled with an aggressive education program that taught the community the early warning signs of a heart attack. This education program extended to middle and high school students via health and science curricula.

Since its inception, the CPED has gone through a second generation of early heart attack care in becoming a Cardiac Intervention Area (CIA) with a fast track for early thrombolytic therapy for myocardial infarction patients. It has again combined this with a community program to over- come patient denial.

Presently the CPED is in its third generation teaching and promoting Early Heart Attack Care (EHAC) which encourages early hospital entry for patients with prodromal angina and teaches people in the community to be early cardiac care givers who help victims by getting them to the hospital while symptoms are still minimal.

The EHAC concept has spread widely to an estimated 1,000 hospitals in the USA and the world. EHAC seeks to unite hospitals in their war against heart attack deaths and to reduce heart attack from its position as number one killer of adult Americans, a position it has held since the turn of the century.