Heart Attack or myocardial infarction is one of the fatal diseases in the world as each year about 610,000 Americans succumb to death. In myocardial infarction, “Myo” refers to muscle, “cardial” means the heart, and “infraction” refers to the death of tissue because of lacking deficiency of blood supply. When a person suffers from Heart Block or AV Block, the coronary arteries could not provide oxygen to the heart muscle. For this reason, the heart faces various complications like arrhythmias, carcinogenic shock, hypoxemia, pulmonary edema, deep vein thrombosis, myocardial rupture, ventricular aneurysm, angina, loss of erectile function, loss of libido, etc. So, you need to take immediate treatment and medicine so that you can continue your future life smoothly.
What are the Causes of Heart Attack?
When fatty matter including cholesterol, calcium, proteins, and inflammatory cells build up in any coronary artery, the artery becomes narrow. This situation is known as atherosclerosis. So the clogged substances or plaques are firm on the outside and soft on the inside. As the plaque is hard, there happens the plaque rupture. Then, the cholesterol and other substances will spill into the bloodstream. Then the platelets of blood come to the area, and blood clots construct around the plaque. If the lump is large enough, the coronary artery can deprive of oxygen and nutrients by blocking the flow of blood and it is ischemia.
Another cause of heart attack is spasm by coronary artery. It may occur at the time of rest. Again, the amount of damage depends on the size of the area of a blocked artery. The time between blocking and treatment also one of the factors of damaging.
Some Risk Factors
- The men above age 45 and the women above age 55 have a tendency of a heart attack.
- The excessive gain of tobacco
- High blood pressure can put a high risk in life.
- High level of low-density lipoprotein.
- Obesity enhances the risk of a heart attack.
- Diabetes, family history of heart attack, high amount of sedentary jobs – all of these are also the reasons behind a heart attack.
Prevention is Better than Cure
It is so much troublesome to cure and maintain life after having a heart attack. So, we can prevent it, which will be more helpful for our health.
- Avoid smoking.
- Maintain a balanced diet all the time.
- Do a good amount of exercise.
- Get the right amount of sleep.
- Keep yourself away from alcohol.
- Keep in check the blood cholesterol level.
- Try to keep your body in shape.
- Be cheerful and street free.
If you want to recover yourself from the after effect of heart attack, you need to take measures. You need to keep your body active, start your job again, refrain yourself from depression.
What can you do primarily if you encounter a Heart Attack recently?
- If you see someone who is senseless and you think this person is having a heart attack, first call at 911 to have emergency medical assistance.
- In the between, the person needs to relax and calm down.
- Then, loosen the person’s dress.
- And if the persons takes any medicine for chest pain, helps him to have it.
- If you see that the person is not breathing and you could not find a pulse, only then you should start CPR or Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation to keep the flow of blood.
- Push hard on the person’s chest in a rhythmic way like 100 to 120 compressions in a minute. It is called manual chest compression.
- If you are not expert in CPR, only do the manual chest compressions.
- If you know how to do CPR, you can go on to opening the airway and save breathing.
What is the Treatment of Heart Attack?
First of all, you need to understand the symptoms of heart attack. On the contrary, there could be a silent myocardial infarction which doesn’t show any prominent signs. Then, without any delay, the patient needs to be taken to the hospital or the doctor to diagnose the disease and its severity. The motto of all these attempts or treatment is to lessen the heart muscle damage.
For the diagnosis
- Through electrocardiogram (ECG): It can detect where and how much damaged has happened. It can also count the heart rate and rhythm.
- Through blood test: The cardiac enzymes can indicate the amount of muscle damage. The doctor can also find the time of the attack.
- Through echocardiography: It can tell us the rate of heart’s bumping and the areas where the bumping is not happening naturally. It shows everything through images. It can also detect any fault in the valves, septum.
- Through cardiac catheterization: It can show the doctor which area is affected and by this process the doctor can decide that in which method he should proceed.
- Chest X-ray: We can also detect heart attack through x-ray.
The treatments and medicine following a heart attack
There is always a tendency of occurrence of a heart attack. So we need to care about our treatments and medicines. You need to act immediately to lessen the danger. They are-
- Help of aspirin and other antiplatelets( Brilinta, Effient, Plavix) for not to clogging of blood.
- Beta blockers.
- Angiotensin converting enzyme(ACE) inhibitors.
- Nitroglycerin is also a medicine.
- Percutaneous coronary intervention
- Cardiac rehabilitation
- Oxygen therapy.
- Lifestyle modification
- Angioplasty or putting stents
- Bypass surgery or CABG
- Thrombolytic therapy.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes we feel heaviness in our chest, arm, or breastbone, or there can a feeling of nausea or irregular heartbeats. We don’t care about them. But remember, these small symptoms could bring vast havoc. So take care of your health. Doproper treatment and take the medicines in exact time. A regular check-up or screening of your heart could prevent heart attack or Heart Block or AV Block. This disease could come back! So please keep a check on your lifestyle and do the test properly.
