How to Recognize A Heart Attack
From your Guide

Heart attacks are responsible for 500,000 deaths every year in the U.S. alone and most of the deaths occur in the first hour of the attack. Everyone should know how to recognize a heart attack because early detection and treatment can reduce this risk.

Difficulty Level: Easy    Time Required: 5 min

1. A heart attack most often causes chest pain.
2. The pain is located in the center of the chest, is intense in its severity and most victims describe it as the worst pain they've ever felt in their lives.
3. The character of the pain is very difficult to describe accurately. Chest pain in a heart attack has been variously described as being crushing, tearing, binding or feeling like a heavy weight has been placed on one's chest.
4. The pain lasts longer than a few minutes. In angina pectoris, a milder version of a block to the heart's blood supply, the pain typically stops within five minutes.
5. The chest pain in a heart attack may spread or radiate to the neck, jaw, left arm and sometimes even to the fingertips or back.
6. During a heart attack, in addition to chest pain, there may be associated nausea with or without vomiting, a sudden bowel movement, profuse sweating and an ashen pallor.
7. In severe heart attacks, the heart's pumping action may be so badly impeded that the victim loses consciousness.
8. Due to the decreased pumping capacity of the heart, the patient's pulse feels feeble and thready, and the heart rate is extremely fast.
9. In rare cases, as in patients who are diabetic, the heart attack may not be very painful, and sometimes can even be entirely painless.
10. Other disorders that could be confused with a heart attack include acute gallbladder infection, perforation of stomach or intestine, pulmonary embolism and aortic dissection.
11. Confirmed diagnosis of a heart attack can be made in a hospital, by recording an EKG or by analyzing the levels of various enzymes in the blood.
12. Early emergency treatment is of the essence.
    

Tips:

1. Heart attacks are the commonest cause of sudden severe chest pain.
2. Early recognition and treatment can considerably reduce mortality risk.
3. When in doubt about the diagnosis, rush the victim to hospital.

Related Information:

• After a Heart Attack
• What is a Heart Attack
• What happens in a Heart Attack?
  

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