Question: if u get an heart attack what machine (sorry if i spelt it wrong ) would u use if your using on to help it and how long would it take for the patient to get back to normal

Emma Wellham answered on 13 Jun 2018:

If someone is having a heart attack, there are lots of machines used to help them. We put on something called an ‘electrocardiogram’ or ‘ECG’ to look at the hearts electrical activity: how fast is it pumping, does it pump too slow, does it pump too fast, is the heart muscle unhappy, which blood vessel is causing the heart attack? We also set up ‘invasive blood pressure’ to look at the blood pressure inside the patient and the heart chambers and vessels.

The doctor then puts a small tube called a catheter into a small hole in the patients wrist. From here they can move it forward until it gets to the heart arteries. Then we use x-rays to take pictures of the heart to find out which blood vessel is causing the heart attack. The doctor then passes a squashed up balloon through the catheter until it gets to the blockage, then they put air in the balloon to push open the blockage. When the blood vessel is open again, blood can flow to all of the heart muscle and the patient might start to feel better. The doctor then puts a small metal cage called a stent into the catheter and opens it where the blockage was to hold open the blood vessel, hopefully for many years!

The patient will hopefully feel better almost straight away! But it may take a few months before they can do all the exercise they were doing before.