tinyurl.com/6xets -> www.heartinfo.org/ms/guides/9/main.html
Spanish version: Sintomas del ataque cardiaco/signos de alerta ) A blockage in the heart's arteries may reduce or completely cut off the b lood supply to a portion of the heart. This can cause a blood clot to fo rm and totally stop blood flow in a coronary artery, resulting in a hear t attack (also called an acute myocardial infarction or MI) Irreversible injury to the heart muscle usually occurs if medical help is not received promptly. Unfortunately, it is common for people to dismis s heart attack symptoms. The American Heart Association and other medical experts say the body lik ely will send one or more of these warning signals of a heart attack: * Uncomfortable pressure, fullness, squeezing or pain in the center of the chest lasting more than a few minutes. It may feel like pressure, tightness, burning, or heavy weight. It may be located in the chest, upper abdomen, neck, jaw, or inside the arms or shoulders. IF YOU NOTICE ONE OR MORE OF THESE SIGNS IN YOURSELF OR OTHERS, DON'T WAIT. In the event of cardiopulmonary arrest (no breathi ng or pulse), call 9-1-1 and begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) i mmediately. The actual diagnosis of a heart attack must be made by a doctor who has s tudied the results of several tests. The doctor may: * Review the patient's complete medical history. By William R Ladd, MD, Director of Nuclear Cardiology, Cardiovascular Institute of the South If you suffer chest pain, particularly while exercising, you will almost certainly wonder whether it might be heart-related - and well you should . Heart muscle pain - angina - is likely to be the first warning of bloc ked coronary arteries, the cause of most heart attacks. While there are no infallible guidelines about whether a chest pain is he art-related, it generally takes a particular form. The textbook description of angina is a fe eling of heaviness, pressure, tightness or aching in the chest, usually accompanied by shortness of breath. The pain generally goes away when yo u stop exerting yourself, and it frequently isn't especially severe, whi ch is, perhaps, unfortunate. Even a heart attack may not be unbearably painful at first, permitting it s victim to delay seeking treatment for as much as four to six hours aft er its onset. By then, the heart may have suffered irreversible damage. It is not unknown for patients to drive themselves to emergency rooms wi th what proved to be very serious and even fatal heart attacks. Angina is a protest from the heart muscle that it isn't getting enough ox ygen because of diminished blood supply. A heart attack is simply the mo st extreme state of oxygen deprivation, in which whole regions of heart muscle cells begin to die for lack of oxygen. If the blockage in the art eries serving the heart muscle can be cleared quickly enough - within th e first few hours of the onset of the attack - the permanent damage can be held to a minimum. That's why it is so vital to seek medical attention quickly if you feel t he sort of pressing pain or heaviness described above. There is a 90 per cent probability that pain of this type is angina. And even if it goes a way, the artery blockages that caused it are still there and will grow p rogressively worse. Ignoring this sort of pain because it is not unbearable or because it goe s away is the worst thing you can do. It is the only warning you are lik ely to get of a potentially lethal condition. These so-called "silent heart attacks," however, are only the most extrem e case of a still more prevalent condition called "silent ischemia" - a chronic shortage of oxygen - and nutrient-bearing blood to a portion of the heart. The cause of ischemia, silent or otherwise, is almost always atherosclero sis - the progressive narrowing of the heart's arteries from accumulatio ns of cholesterol plaque. In most instances, this reduction in blood sup ply generates a protest from the heart - the crushing pain called angina . But in perhaps 25 to 30 percent of heart attack victims, there were no previous symptoms of these gradually developing blockages. The Framingh am Heart Study, which followed 4,000 Massachusetts men for more than 40 years, found that 25 percent of their subjects' heart attacks go unnotic ed until their annual EKGs detect their after-effects. The absence of pain, however, doesn't mean an absence of damage. The hear t has a built-in reserve capacity, allowing it to suffer a certain amoun t of scarring and weakening from a heart attack and continue to meet the body's needs. But further ischemia or another heart attack, even a mild to moderate one, may prove fatal because that reserve capacity is no lo nger there. Even those who survive another heart attack are at increased risk of becoming cardiac cripples, disabled by congestive heart failure or arrhythmias heartbeat irregularities. There is no way of predicting absolutely who is a candidate for silent is chemia, but statistically, the greater the number of risk factors for co ronary artery disease that you have, the more likely you are to be a can didate. Those risk factors include some you can't control - your age, se x and genetic predisposition to atherosclerosis - and those you can infl uence, like diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoki ng, lack of exercise and obesity. As a rule of thumb, I would urge you to undergo a screening for silent is chemia if you have any three of these factors working against you - a ma n over age 50 who smokes, or a post-menopausal woman with a ten-year his tory of diabetes and chronic unfavorable blood cholesterol levels, for i nstance. The screening for undetected ischemia is a medical history and physical e xamination and a cardiac stress test - a workout on a treadmill while yo ur heart function is monitored. It's a simple, painless and inexpensive way to learn whether the beating of your heart is accompanied by the inaudible ticking of an atherosclero sis time bomb that could kill you. org is for educational purposes only and does not serve as a replacement for care provided by y our own personal health care team. org does not render or prov ide medical advice, and no individual should make any medical decisions or change their health behavior based on information provided here. org should be discussed with you r personal physician to evaluate whether it has any relevance to or impa ct on your specific condition.
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