1. What does heart attack mean?
Heart attack means that some of the muscle in your heart has died. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction (MI). Most commonly, a heart attack starts with a kind of heavy pressure or pain in the chest, often extending into the neck or left arm. You may have trouble catching your breath, or you may feel weak and break into a cold sweat.
A heart attack usually occurs when one of the blood vessels (called coronary arteries) that bring blood to your heart muscle is blocked. This can happen when a blood clot forms in a blood vessel that is already partially blocked. The partial blockage, which develops over many years, is most often caused by too much fat layered in the wall of the blood vessel (this is often called hardening of the arteries—the medical term for this is atherosclerosis).
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2. If I have chest pain, does that mean I am having a heart attack?
Many other problems can cause chest pain, and it is not always possible to tell just from the type of chest pain whether or not you are having a
heart attack. Many people have chest pain from straining the muscles in their chest, and chest pain can occur with some lung problems. Chest pain can be a warning sign of hardening of the arteries of the heart (coronary artery disease or CAD). Chest pain that occurs during exercise, hard work, or at times of stress, lasts for a few minutes and goes away with rest is called
angina. If the pain lasts longer than just a few minutes, especially if it occurs when you are resting, seek immediate medical attention.
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3. What are the other heart attack tests?
Doctors may use more than one test to determine if a person who has chest pain is having a
heart attack.
Troponin is generally considered the most accurate test, and
CK-MB (the heart isoenzyme of CK) is also highly accurate in detecting damage to the heart, even when there is no other evidence of a heart attack.
Myoglobin and creatine kinase almost always rise in patients with a heart attack, but they are less specific – other conditions can also produce an increase in these two tests.
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4. What if I’m not sure I’m having a heart attack?
If you have prolonged chest pain, especially if it does not go away with rest— or if you have been told you have
angina and the drugs you were prescribed do not ease the pain—seek immediate medical attention. Many people who have had a
heart attack die without ever having tried to call an ambulance or get to an emergency room.
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