What is Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) ?

This is commonly known as a heart attack. When blood flow to the heart muscle decreases or is blocked for some period of time, it causes hampering or damage to the heart muscle. This occurs due to blockage of coronary arteries.

Symptoms

• Chest pain or discomfort in the chest—this pain gives pressure to the chest to feel heaviness, tightness, and squeezing pain over the chest. It continues for a few minutes. This pain can be shifted towards the shoulders, arms, back, neck, jaw, or stomach.
• Breathlessness: people may feel shortness of breath.
• Other associated symptoms are heartburn or feeling like indigestion, sweating, dizziness, and vomiting tendency.
• Occasionally patients may be asymptomatic and may present with upper abdominal pain.

Risk Factors

• Age: with age, the risk of having a heart attack increases.
• Family History: If you have a family history of heart diseases, then there is a risk of developing heart diseases.
• Smoking: this is a very common factor for blockage of arteries and having heart attacks.
• High blood pressure: it causes pressure to the arteries and damages them over time.
• High cholesterol: increased cholesterol level causes accumulation of fat in arteries and eventually blocks it, which leads to heart attack.
• Some diseases have a risk of developing a heart attack, like diabetes.
• Obesity is one of the risk factors.
• Others: lack of exercise, unhealthy food habits, excess stressful conditions, etc.

Diagnosis

• Electrocardiogram (ECG): The first thing we do is an ECG to see the electrical signal of the heart. It shows changes if you are having or had a heart attack. But even with normal ECG patients may have a chance of heart disease.
• Blood tests: this is the most reliable test. We do troponin I, which is a heart protein that releases into the blood during a heart attack.
• Chest X-ray: We can see the size and shape of the heart.
• Echocardiogram: This can identify which part of the heart is damaged or affected.
• Coronary angiography: through this procedure we can see the percentage of blockage of arteries.

Treatment

• Medications: if blockage of heart vessels is not significant, the doctor will use some medication that will help to reduce the blockage of arteries.
• Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI): By using a balloon, the doctor will dilate the coronary artery and place a stent/ring in the blockage area so that blood can pass through the vessel easily. This treatment is available in Cardiology Department.
• Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG): by doing this surgery, the doctor will create a path for blood to flow into the heart. This treatment is available in Cardiovascular Department.

If anyone is having a heart attack, please immediately go to the hospital because they need emergency medical help immediately. Remember, immediate measures can save lives and also reduce the damage to the heart.