Common diseases & risk factors

How Avi Medical helps you with a heart attack

A heart attack is an acute emergency that requires immediate action. If action is not taken quickly enough, any help will come too late. The best protection for your health is therefore medical prevention, such as the treatment and early detection of individual risk factors. These are long-term and effective measures in which our experienced doctors are at your side at all locations.

What is a heart attack?

A heart attack is a specific form of arteriosclerosis that affects your heart. In this clinical picture, your heart muscle is no longer supplied with sufficient blood due to a blocked or occluded vessel. The result: individual cells and thus tissue die and the organ fails.

At what point is it arteriosclerosis?

A heart attack is diagnosed on the basis of three factors that are present at the same time. These are:

  • a deficiency in the supply of the heart muscle
  • damage to the tissue
  • The pathological increase in your troponin level detected in your blood by laboratory chemistry.

Good to know: Troponin is a protein that is found in the heart muscle. When heart muscle cells die, they enter your bloodstream and can be measured in the laboratory.

What are the triggers of a heart attack?

The beginning of every heart attack is arteriosclerosis, which is a pathological plaque build-up in your vessels. This deposit is carried on by your bloodstream and eventually enters the coronary arteries, which supply your heart muscle and now narrow.

As a result, an inflammatory reaction occurs in the small vessels in the form of a build-up of blood platelets. This, however, causes the coronary vessels to narrow even further.

The result: the vessels are eventually completely blocked and can no longer supply the heart muscle with blood. Heart muscle cells die irreversibly and scars form.

What are the possible causes of heart attack? 

You can recognise a heart attack by the following typical symptoms:

  • Reduced physical resilience
  • sudden chest pain (the "stone" on the chest or a feeling of constriction)
  • Radiation of the pain into the left shoulder and arm or neck and lower jaw
  • Sweating/cold sweat
  • Nausea
  • Fear of death
  • Strong and accelerated heart palpitations

Atypical symptoms include:

  • Reduced physical resilience
  • Especially in women and older people: radiation of pain to the right side of the body and the back
  • Fatigue
  • Especially in diabetics: shortness of breath as the only symptom

The treatment of a heart attack at Avi Medical

A heart attack usually occurs suddenly (for example at night or at work) and requires a combination of two factors for successful treatment. These are: a quick diagnosis and immediate therapy. If the worst comes to the worst, our experienced doctors at Avi Medical will help you as a patient with one of these two therapies as a first step:

  • If hospitalised quickly: implantation of a stent. This wire mesh opens the occluded vessels
  • If a long time has elapsed since the infarction: Medication to dissolve the blood clot (e.g. with heparin).

And since comprehensive aftercare is essential for a full recovery, we at Avi Medical are of course also at your side in this area in our practices. This includes:

  • the consistent (medicinal) adjustment of your blood clotting. This will help you avoid re-storage of platelets in coronary arteries or stents.
  • Help with setting blood pressure and blood lipid levels and a medical guide to avoiding cardiac arrhythmias.
  • Regular physical examinations such as laboratory and instrumental (ECG, sonography) checks  
  • a consultation on your fitness to drive