A heart attack occurs when a coronary artery becomes blocked, for example by a blood clot or a gradual build-up of fat (‘atheroma’).

Heart Attack Causes: What Happens When You Have a Heart Attack

Heart disease is often caused by fatty matter, calcium, proteins and inflammatory cells building up along the artery walls to form plaques of different sizes. When the plaque ruptures, blood clots form, blocking the artery and the starving the heart muscle becomes of oxygen. If your artery is blocked for more than a few minutes, the muscle cells in the area of your heart supplied by that artery may become permanently damaged. This is called a heart attack. Often, the amount of muscle damage is small and there is enough good muscle left for the heart to function.

A heart attack can, occasionally, be brought on by doing energetic activity which you are not used to, or by intense physical or emotional stress, but can also happen when a person is resting.

Rarely, an artery spasm can also cause a heart attack. During coronary spasm, the arteries restrict or spasm on and off, reducing blood supply to the heart muscle.

Heart Attack Facts: What Happens To Your Heart After a Heart Attack?

The heart muscle begins to heal soon after a heart attack and takes about eight weeks, forming a scar that does not function as healthy heart muscle tissue. This means that the heart's pumping ability is lessened after a heart attack. A heart attack may be referred to as a coronary thrombosis or myocardial infarction.

Heart Attack Symptoms: How to Tell if You’re Having a Heart Attack

• Chest pain, possibly similar to angina or more sever. The pain is not necessarily unbearable – it usually feels like a heaviness or tightness, and may spread to the arms, neck, jaw, back or stomach
• Sweating, dizzyness, shortness of breath, nausea or choking feeling, sometimes misconstrued as indigestion
• Disturbed heartbeats

A heart attack is likely if symptoms continue for more than 15 minutes, unchecked by resting or nitrate tablets and spray. Sometimes, however, there are no symptoms at all (a ‘silent’ heart attack), especially among diabetics. In these cases the problem is often only discovered during a medical investigation for other symptoms or a routine medical examination.

Heart Attack Information: What to Do When Someone’s Having a Heart Attack

When heartbeats become so disturbed that the heart stops pumping (‘ventricular fibrillation’), the person having the heart attack goes into cardiac arrest and loses consciousness. Rescue breathing and chest compressions, or an electric shock from a defibrillator, must be administered as soon as possible to avoid the heart attack causing brain damage.

Call for emergency heart attack help immediately, as quick treatment is vital to reduce damage to the heart and increase your chances of heart attack survival.

Read More

Heart Disease: Currently, just under 2.7 million people in the UK have coronary heart disease, the most common type of heart disease, of which there are several different types.

Types of Heart Disease: There are many types of heart disease, each with their own unique symptoms. Read on to learn....

Reduce Your Risk of Heart Disease: Find out more about heart disease and find out how you can minimise the risk of developing the disease.

Understanding Heart Attacks: Find out more about the symptoms of a heart attack.