HEART ATTACKS
About
- Heart attack signs and symptoms in men and women: Chest pain or discomfort; Shortness of breath; Pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, back, arm, or shoulder; Feeling nauseous, light-headed, or unusually tired.
- A heart attack, also called a myocardial infarction, happens when a part of the heart muscle doesn’t get enough blood.
- The more time that passes without treatment to restore blood flow, the greater the damage to the heart muscle.
- Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the main cause of heart attack. A less common cause is a severe spasm, or sudden contraction, of a coronary artery that can stop blood flow to the heart muscle.
Associated Symptoms
- Chest pain or discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the centre or left side of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or that goes away and comes back.
- The discomfort can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain. Feeling weak, light-headed, or faint. You may also break out into a cold sweat.
- Pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, or back.
- Pain or discomfort in one or both arms or shoulders.
- Shortness of breath. This often comes along with chest discomfort, but the shortness of breath also can happen before chest discomfort.
Heart attack during Exercise
A heart attack or cardiac arrest during any physical activity usually happens to those people who already have heart disease or genetic condition, like-
- Any genetic abnormality such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, this condition involves the thickening of a portion of the heart muscle, which makes it difficult to pump blood.
- Due to this, there is no balance between the demand and supply of blood.
- Other rare cases of a life-threatening heart attack on the field or in the gym include the sudden formation of a blood clot in the heart for some reason, affecting blood flow.
- A sudden decrease in blood flow in this way causes damage, especially to a healthy heart, which is new to working with low blood flow.
- If the heart is already weak, then it has passed through that condition.
- There is another situation when the heart is slowly accumulating cholesterol etc. over the years.
Factors resulting in a spike in Heart Attack
Post-Covid development of thrombosis
SARS-Cov-2 damages the heart and blood vessels in infected patients which leads to the development of clots, heart inflammation, arrhythmias, and heart failure.
Thrombosis
It occurs when blood clots block veins or arteries, Covid-19 can also cause microvascular damage, which may have also contributed to heart ailments.
Additional distress was noticed in during the pandemic, Anxiety and stress levels further added to heart ailments.
Delay in diagnosis of heart-related ailment amid the second wave
During the second wave, many patients avoided hospitals due to fear of contracting Covid-19, which further delayed life-saving treatment.
Reperfusion therapies
It is like Thrombolytic therapy (that dissolves clots) and timely interventions like angioplasty (the procedure used to widen blocked or narrowed coronary arteries) were delayed.
Better recording of heart-attack cases
since the start of the pandemic, medical practitioners are more conscious of segregation and bifurcation of types of deaths as well as maintaining better data related to heart attacks.
Major lifestyle changes
Life has become more sedentary with fewer options for socialisation and physical activities.
The role of PCSK9
- Use of PCSK9 inhibitors (PCSK9) helps in lowering cholesterol levels and reducing the risk of heart attacks.
- The PCSK9 are a new class of injectable drugs that reportedly reduce ‘bad’ cholesterol levels by up to 60% when combined with a statin (another class of drugs prescribed to help lower cholesterol levels).
- The discovery of cholesterol-lowering mutations in a human gene called PCSK9 led to the development of the most promising new drugs against heart disease since statins.
