I want to return this week to the subject of heart attack. Patients often assume that people who die suddenly or need CPR—what we term cardiac arrest—have had a heart attack. But the two entities are not the same thing. While it is true that a person who is having a heart attack can have a cardiac arrest as a complication of the heart attack, this is just one of the causes of cardiac arrest. These include:
- Arrhythmia of the heart: ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation
- Caused by a primary electrical abnormality in the heart
- Caused by a heart attack
- Caused by having a cardiomyopathy
- Pulmonary embolism (a clot in the lungs)
- Sudden loss of blood, like rupture of an aneurysm
- Overwhelming medical condition, like sepsis (bloodstream infection)
Below is a graphic that nicely summarizes the major differences between heart attack and cardiac arrest:
Greg Koshkarian, MD, FACC