Myocardial Infarction Definition and Symptoms

Learn from cardiologist José L. Zambrano, MD, what a myocardial infarction (heart attack) is and what the typical symptoms include.

Prof. José L. Zambrano, MD: The most frequent, the most common cause of death in developed countries are cardiovascular diseases. And out of cardiovascular diseases, coronary artery disease is the most prevalent.
he heart is a muscle that is pumping the blood every day, every minute, every single second, and in fact it is pumping more or less 7,000 liters per day. It is beating more than 100,000 times per day.
And all these cardiac function is done because the heart itself requires oxygen, requires the necessary food or the necessary nutrients for doing its function. How the heart is receiving this oxygen is via the coronary arteries. There are three main coronary arteries that supplies oxygen to the heart in order to keep its function.
An infarction is when one of these coronary arteries is occluded. What happens then is that since the artery is occluded, the heart is not receiving the necessary oxygen for its proper function, so if you do not receive food, if you do not receive oxygen, then that part of the heart is going to die, is going to be what we called necrotic, and this is exactly an infarction. So an infarction is the result of an occlusion of the artery that implies that a certain amount of cells, of heart cells are going to die, because they are not receiving the necessary oxygen, this is an infarction.
And what is the result of that? Well, the patient what is referring to us is chest pain, usually they just feel some discomfort, and they refer as well doctor, I have sudden chest pain, or even on the arms, or in the neck, or in the back. Those show the most specific symptom of an infarction is this chest pain. My recommendation will be if you have some chest discomfort, chest pain, that may be related to an infarction, do not lose time, just call your doctor, or go to the emergency department.

[patjones]

Closed caption helps understanding him!

[SugarRayCharles.]

I constantly feel a tightness/hardness in my left chest area, and it's almost as if I can feel something at the bottom left of my chest.

[KimSyracuse-pi]

What caused me just seating and All second what happened to me is I gotten pain in my right side in back of my shoulders pain went from the right to left shoulder down to hand came back to right shoulder and then it went to under my Right jaw sound like cracking up under the jaw then I try to speak but couldn't and the people Said that I went into a seizure I did had few strokes but doctor said they looked at CT scan and they don't see any kinda seizure at the CT scan