Homework: Day 8 [ Cardiac Attack? Or a Heart Arrest? ]

“Aren’t Cardiac Attacks and Heart Arrests the same?”

Umm, well they both are cardiovascular diseases, I’ll give you that, but they aren’t the same. Let’s see why…

A Cardiac Arrest is the sudden unexpected loss of heart function; basically when your heart completely stops beating. There is usually an electrical disturbance in the heart which may be the cause of it to unexpectedly stop. And because it stops this also stops blood from going to other parts of the body.

A Heart Attack is when blood flow to some part of the heart is blocked causing damage or death to the heart muscle. During a heart attack the heart does no stop beating it just stops pumping blood.

Here are some key words that you might did in the future:

Arrhythmia

Ventricular fibrillation

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Arrhythmia: this means that the heart has an abnormal rhythm

Ventricular fibrillation: is an extreme version of arrhythmia; V-Fib can be life-threatening.

These things are often linked to cardiac arrests:

Family History

Obesity

Smoking

Age

Gender etc…

For more information visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cardiacarrest.html