Every year more than 1 million Americans have heart attacks. In medical terms heart attack is referred to as “myocardial infarction.” “Myo” means muscle, “cardio” means heart, and “infarct” means death of tissue due to lack of oxygen. Most of us have either read something about heart attack or know a little bit about it. However, how many of us really know exactly what happens during a heart attack. In this article we will get familiar with the situation.
Your Heart
Normally a heart beats approximately once every second. During the day, it pumps around 2,000 gallons of blood through the circulatory system. The circulatory system consists of arteries and veins. It is the arteries that we are concerned about here because it is they which supply oxygen rich blood to all the tissues of your body, including your heart.
CAD
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the main causes of heart attacks. CAD refers to narrowing or blockage of coronary arteries. So how does this blockage occur? When there is build-up of fat inside your arteries, it slightly injures your blood vessel walls. In order to heal these blood vessels, your cells release chemicals that make the blood vessel walls stickier.
Formation Of Plaques
The substances that travel through your blood stream, such as cellular waste products, proteins, calcium, and inflammatory cell, start sticking to the walls of the blood vessels. Over the years the fat and other substances combine. This whole process leading to the formation of plaque is called atherosclerosis.
Formation of plaque on the inner walls of the arteries leads to the restriction of blood flow to the heart. Many of these plaque deposits are soft on the inside but hard on the outside. Sometimes the hard surface cracks, thereby exposing the soft fat inside. Once this happens, platelets, which are disc shaped particles that help in blood clotting, come to the area and start forming blood clots around the plaque.
Blockage
If a blood clot ends up totally blocking the supply of blood to your heart, the heart muscles will soon be starved for oxygen. This is called a heart attack. This is when you may start showing some of the heart attack symptoms, such as sweating, chest pain and discomfort, pain in the neck, jaw, back, shoulders, vomiting, etc. As the time passes by your heart muscles begin to die due to lack of oxygen supply.
In a heart attack it is important to seek medical attention fast so as to prevent damage to the heart muscle. Doctors can open up the artery and remove the blockage, thereby saving much of the heart muscle and avoid permanent damage.
Consequences
Significant damage to the heart muscle can lead to immediate heart failure and the patient can go into a shock, which means low blood pressure. If the damage is only moderate, the heart will begin to heal itself by enlarging and changing its shape. Over a period of time this would decrease the heart’s pumping efficiency and lead to gradual onset of heart failure.
To a very large extent the damage caused to the heart during a heart attack depends on where the blockage occurred. If the blockage is near the origin of an artery, it will affect more heart muscle. In comparison, a blockage further down the artery will not cause much damage to the heart.
Lethal Arrhythmias
Acute heart attacks often trigger irregular heart rhythms, referred to as lethal heart arrhythmias. These arrhythmias usually occur during the first few hours of a heart attack. If the victim is under medical attention when these arrhythmias occur, they can almost be stopped. If a victim of heart attack is unable to get medical attention, these arrhythmias will definitely lead to death.
Now we understand what happens during a heart attack and hopefully it will help you realize how important it is to get medical help right away.