If you are having any chest pain or discomfort in any part of your upper body or left arm, along with difficulty breathing and a cold sweat for more the 10 minutes, please call for an ambulance and don’t try to drive yourself to the hospital because you might be having a heart attack. My name is Dr Amer.
Heart attacks is the number one killer in the US. Unfortunately, a lot of patients die before reaching the hospital. So, its very important to recognize the early signs of heart attack. The chest pain can be either very bad or mild like a pressure or heavy feelings on the chest. Sometimes, you might be feeling dizzy or having palpitation or irregular heartbeat.
A heart attack means that one of the heart’s arteries got blocked with a clot and stopped supplying blood to the heart. Heart attack is a part of condition called coronary heart
disease which also include Angina. It is possible that you might have it without any symptoms especially in the early stages. The risk factors for coronary heart disease are diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol and the family history.
On the other hand, angina is a condition where one of the heart’s arteries is narrow but not yet completely blocked. At the beginning there might be no symptoms, but if the narrowing gradually gets worse, then you might develop some chest pain or discomfort when walking or going upstairs. Eventually if angina is not treated, patients can end up getting a heart attack.
How to discover coronary heart disease? It is easy if you are having some symptoms. We normally diagnose angina by doing an ECG or an Ultrasound of the heart as well as a
treadmill stress test. For the heart attack we also do an ECG and a blood test to check for elevated cardiac enzyme called troponin. But the best test to confirm the diagnosis is by doing a cardiac catheterization.
This is done by putting a tube inside one of the arteries in your legs or arms, and moving it up to the heart, then injecting a dye to discover if there is a narrowed or blocked artery on the Xray. The good news is that, we can fix the problem at the same time by inserting and inflating a ballon to open the blockage then putting a stint to prevent it from getting blocked again in the future.
Finally, it is very important to discover the heart attack very early, because the sooner you get to the emergency room the better your chance of survival.
Video shot by Galia Helbaoui and edited by Amer Helbaoui
22 фев 2023
