When do you have a heart attack?

Answer

Dear Lotte,

A heart attack occurs when part of your heart muscle does not get enough oxygen.

You can therefore also have infarctions in other places in your body if there is too little oxygen, for example a cerebral infarction if too little oxygen comes to your brain.

Your blood flows normally through your arteries without ever stopping. You have two systems in your body: blood vessels that go to your organs (arteries) and blood vessels that go to your heart (veins). The arteries (usually) carry oxygenated blood and will ensure that all organs receive enough oxygen to live.

Now it can happen that due to incorrect nutrition, congenital problems or other diseases, your arteries slowly close and less blood can pass. So you get, as it were, a traffic jam in your arteries and the oxygen will only gradually reach the organs. You can compare it to squeezing a garden hose where less water will come out if you squeeze the hose harder.

If at a certain moment there is no blood at all (and therefore no oxygen) anymore through the artery, the organ that needs it will be without oxygen. If this happens to the arteries that supply your heart with oxygen, we speak of a heart attack. Your heart muscle will then start to die.

It is then important to reopen the passage as soon as possible. There are various techniques for this (medication, balloon,…) and hopefully your heart can recover in time.

Kind regards,