Please enjoy HeartPoint, a site for patient education. We hope you find the animation below explaining the mechanism of a heart attack useful. Feel free to visit the rest of our site by clicking on the HeartPoint logo. To return to the EHAC site, click on its icon.
HeartPoint animation: this will take approximately 1 minute to load.
The graphic above shows the mechanism of a heart attack, and why EARLY WARNING IS SO IMPORTANT.
Heart attacks begin in arteries which have built up cholesterol plaques. At some point in their existence, these plaques may become "unstable", and have their contents exposed to the bloodstream. When this happens, elements in the blood recognize this as a foreign substance, and attempt to isolate it by forming a clot around it. As the clot grows, it can totally obstruct the flow of blood.
When the heart muscle supplied by this artery runs out of blood, it runs out of the vital fuels it needs to keep pumping, indeed it will not even have enough to survive. As the illustration shows, the area of muscle grows over time. If the process can be interrupted, much or all of the muscle can be salvaged. The earlier the vessel is opened, the more muscle is saved.
©COPY;1997 HeartPoint Updated December 1997
Learn the signs of a possible heart attack, and do the smart thing - call 9-1-1.
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