Difference between Heart Attack and Cardiac Arrest

Difference between Heart Attack and Cardiac Arrest

Heart attack vs Cardiac Arrest

Difference between heart attack and Cardiac arrest: – Now days a lot of diseases are common in the society and heart attack and cardiac arrest are couple of them. If you look around yourself, then you know that millions of people have been died due to heart attack. Sometimes people confuses heart attack and Cardiac arrest and consider both of them same.  No there is little bit difference between heart attack and Cardiac arrest.

Difference between Heart Attack and Cardiac Arrest

The heart is one of the most important organs of the human body, and everyone knows it. It pumps the blood throughout the body, which is how a body is capable of keeping itself alive, as the blood transfers nutrients, oxygen and performs a lot of other functions. Along with being important, it is quite a delicate organ and even the slightest of dysfunction can be fatal.

“Heart attack” and “Cardiac arrest” are two specialized medical conditions related to heart, which is generally used synonymously by medical professionals. However, there are different from each other in various scientific and medical aspects.

Heart Attack

Myocardial infarction (MI), more commonly known as the heart attack, is quite a serious medical condition as it identifies the damage to the myocardium (heart muscles). The harm to the myocardium is actually the result of necrotic lesions which arises because of unavailability of oxygen and nutrition to the heart muscles.

The myocardium receives oxygen and nutrition through the coronary arteries. In conditions of high cholesterol level as it gets accumulated in greater amounts in endothelium (innermost part of the arteries) of the coronary vessels. As a result, the lumen of the coronary arteries gets narrowed, which then ultimately leads to the impaired blood circulation to the myocardium. This is the primary reason for myocardial infarction.

The most common symptoms of a heart attack include torso pain, which decreases with an increase of workload on the body.

Cardiac Arrest

When the heart fails to contract effectively or totally stops beating, the problem is then referred as cardiac arrest or cardiopulmonary arrest. Under such situations, the cardiac system is unable to meet up with the oxygen requirements of different organs inside our body. More often, different main body organs are mainly infected. A reduced amount of oxygen transfer to the brain might cause a stroke or transient ischemic invasion.

Major Differences between Heart Attack and Cardiac Arrest

Heart attack

  • In scientific terminology, the heart attack is a synonym for myocardial infarction (MI).
  • It occurs when there’s damage to cardiac muscles.
  • It is commonly caused because of insufficient supply of air and nutrition to the myocardium,
  • Deposition of LDL-cholesterol narrows the lumen of coronary arteries, which stops the flow of blood within these vessels
  • The common symptoms generally include a sudden upper body pain and sweating
  • It is often dealt with by using different techniques and operations as vasodilators, angioplasty and stent implantation
  • Endocardium is more damaged than Pericardium

Cardiac arrest

  • It is commonly identified by the long-term failure of heart as it ceases to contract.
  • It happens when cardiac activity is incapable of fulfilling the oxygen requirements of different body organs
  • The most common symptoms are Persistent Torso pain, respiratory stress, and even death
  • Impairment in conduction of electromechanical impulses on the myocardium
  • It is often treated by cardiopulmonary recovery (CPR), which is conducted either physically or through defibrillators
  • Cardiac arrest damages the whole body.

So I’m sure after reading these differences between heart attack and cardiac arrest, you should not have any more confusion. At the end of the day it is useless to say where it’s important to know the difference between heart attack and cardiac arrest, here it also has utmost importance to take care of your health.

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