Treatment for Heart Attacks
Heart treatment aims to restore blood flow to the heart and is either given during a heart attack, or as soon as possible afterwards.4
Treatment during a Heart Attack
If you seek emergency medical help, most treatment can begin even before you’ve reached the hospital.4 Treatment options include:2
- Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR): If someone is not breathing or is unresponsive, CPR is usually administered, consisting of breathing air into the lungs, usually mouth to mouth, and compressing the chest to massage the heart into pumping blood around the body
- Defibrillator: If your heart has stopped beating a defibrillator machine can be used to send an electric shock to your heart in order to restart it again
- Aspirin: Given to prevent blood clots in your arteries from getting bigger
- Thrombolytics: These help dissolve clots in the coronary artery so blood can continue to flow to the heart
- Morphine: A painkiller to help reduce pain and anxiety
Treatment following a Heart Attack
Once your condition has been stabilised you may be given medicine to help reduce the risk of further heart attacks. These medications are usually prescribed for the rest of your life, and include:2
- Anti-platelet medication: These help to reduce the ‘stickiness’ of platelets in your blood that form blood clots
- Beta-blockers: These work by blocking the action of certain hormones in your body, such as adrenalin, which increase the rate and force of your heartbeat. Beta-blockers cause the heart to beat slower and less powerfully thereby reducing the strain on your heart. Beta-blockers also stabilise the heart’s electrical activity and have a protective effect on the heart muscle4, 5
- Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors: These cause your blood vessels to widen allowing more blood to flow through them. They also lower your blood pressure to reduce the strain on your heart, thereby slowing down any further weakening of the heart muscle
- Statins: These lower your cholesterol levels by reducing its production in the liver. Generally, the higher your cholesterol levels, the more likely you are to develop plaques in your arteries
Surgery
If your heart has been seriously damaged by a heart attack you may require heart surgery. Two of the most common procedures are outlined below:
- Angioplasty: This is when a small mesh tube, called a stent, is fed into the artery by a tiny tube with a balloon on the end. The tube is usually inserted into a large artery in your groin or arm, and then passed up to your coronary artery using x-ray guidance. This balloon is then inflated, widening the coronary artery. The stent may be left in the widened section to keep the artery open and give support to the artery wall.
- Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG): A procedure whereby the blocked blood vessel is bypassed with other healthy blood vessel segments taken from other areas of your body, such as your leg or chest. These sections of arteries or veins are sewn together to provide an alternate channel through which blood can flow to your heart.
