Heart attack is the medical condition in which your heart doesn’t receive enough amount of oxygen-rich blood due to cholesterol and fats in the arteries which makes the flow of blood difficult and slow. In such case the heart muscle begin to get injured and destroyed due to lack of oxygen and slowly it dies.

Heart attack is the common name for myocardial infraction (medical term).

Process of Heart attack

Our heart muscle needs the oxygen-rich blood continuously to nurture it. Coronary arteries help to supply all the blood required to the heart. If we are diagnosed with coronary artery disease then our arteries gets narrow and restrict the blood to flow easily. The fats, protein, inflammatory cells and calcium form plaques in the arteries. Plaque are of different sizes and harder in surface and softer inside.

The outer shell begins to crack when it gets harder. This situation is known as plaque rupture. The platelets help to clot the rupture and in this process it forms the blood clot around the plaque. But if the clot is bigger and it blocks the blood flowing towards the blood. In this condition the heart suffers the lack of oxygen. This causes the permanent damage to the heart muscle which is death of heart muscle cells. When this medical condition is suffered by any people it is known as heart attack.

The above mentioned is the causes of heart attack for the maximum number of people in America and all around the world. But this may not only be the cause of heart attack. Sometimes it can occur due to muscular contraction of a coronary artery. This situation is known as coronary spasm. The arteries reduces the blood flow in the muscle of the heart and heart may stop pumping and people may get heart attack. But this process is unusual.

How much damage heart attack cause to the heart muscle?

The extent of damage cause by the heart attack to the heart depends upon the size of plaque. It also depends on the period between treatment and injury time.

The damaged heart muscle start to heal suddenly after the heart attack take place but it takes couple of month to heal completely. This process is just like the ordinary skin wound and heart muscle will also get scar but the new formed tissues are not as flexible as the previous tissue. This means our heart will not pump the blood as strongly as before. The pumping capacity of heart will be reduced more if the scar is bigger.

First aid for Heart attack

The best thing possible you can do to a victim of a heart attack is to take him/her to the hospital as soon as possible. For the chest pain that the victim feels you can give him nitroglycerin. You can dial 911 for an emergency. Until the victim reaches the hospital you can give him/her CPR if he is unconscious. You must not forget to loosen his clothes.

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