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A heart attack is a critical event – the heart muscle isn’t getting enough blood, giving patients symptoms of chest pain and shortness of breath. They can range from small amounts of damage to being life-threatening – so how do we treat heart attacks?
When you have coronary artery disease, blockages made up of plaque narrow down or completely block the coronary arteries, reducing the blood supply (ischaemia) or causing a heart attack. To prevent this damage, we can insert a stent to push the blockage out of the way and get blood flow back.
Simply put, this is where electricity is delivered through your heart to get your heart back into a normal rhythm.
Continue reading “What is cardioversion, and what is defibrillation?”
An echocardiogram refers to the use of ultrasound to look at the heart.
Stress tests are generally ordered by your doctor to assess whether you might have a problem with the blood supply to your heart. Although an angiogram can look at the blood supply directly, it carries risk and it’s also invasive, so to avoid that, we can do these tests first to see whether your symptoms are related to your heart.
A coronary angiogram is a procedure that allow us to see the arteries that supply blood to the heart very clearly. These arteries, called coronary arteries, can become narrowed with plaque, leading to a reduced blood supply to the heart (called ischaemia) and potentially a heart attack.
