EVERY DAY HEALTH: The medical term for a heart attack is myocardial infarction, or MI. Someone in the United States has a heart attack about every 34 seconds. These attacks occur because the blood supply to part of the heart muscle gets cut off — often a consequence of atherosclerosis, the formation of a fat-based plaque inside one or more of the arteries that carry oxygen-rich blood to the heart.
About 295,000 incidences of cardiac arrest happen outside of a hospital every year in the United States. While a heart attack is a problem related to circulation, a cardiac arrest is an electrical problem that causes an irregular heartbeat, or an arrhythmia. An arrhythmia can keep your heart from pumping enough blood or it can stop it from beating completely.
A heart attack increases the risk for cardiac arrest, but most heart attacks do not cause cardiac arrest. Other heart conditions that can lead to cardiac arrest include diseases of the heart muscle, heart failure, and a type of arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation… (more)
EDITOR: Also check out “Stayin’ Alive With Hands-Only CPR” for an excellent short on how-to-do-it video. CPR is made far more simple than previously taught.
