The cardiovascular diseases

THE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION - HEART ATTACK

- Definition
- A few explanations
- The Symptoms
- How to make the diagnosis?
- Gravity diagnosis and prognosis
- The Causes
- Evolution and complications
- Medical treatment
- The Coronarography
- Treatment by angioplasty or "Stent"
- The surgical treatment
- Monitoring
- Conclusion

A FEW EXPLANATIONS

The myocardial infarction (heart attack) preferentially occurs when the heart arteries present plaque of atherosclerosiss ofatheroma reducing the blood output. Much more rarely, the myocardial infarction is secondary to a reduction of the diameter of the heart artery, due to its contraction, without any pre-existing lesion.

The destruction of the cardiac muscle evolves from in- to outward the heart and from the centre of the necrosis toward the periphery. 50% of the area, which is no longer supplied in oxygen, is destroyed within 2 hours, 100% within 4 to 6 hours. This rate varies from an individual to the other.

The deterioration of the heart contractile function is always associated to a myocardial infarction, whose healthy part of the muscle contracts more than usually. If 25% of the cardiac muscle is affected, the left cardiac failure occurs; if more than 40% of the heart muscle is affected, death is ineluctable in the absence of an emergency new vascularisation.

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File last modified on july 24, 2006