Confused!

[Auctioneerjim]

Hi all

I’m a bit confused! It seems the more I read about my condition the more it seems unclear.

I’ve heard and read about heart attack victims needing to be in catholic lab within 2 hours as the optimum time to have the best chance as the heart is effectively dying. I was diagnosed as having had a heart attack approx 8 hours afterwards but didn’t get an angiogram/angioplasty until the following day. Does this mean my ongoing condition is worse because of this or is this 2 hour timeframe not accurate?

I’d like to know

Jim

[Zena166]

Hi Jim here is a link to NICE guidelines for acute coronary syndrome (heart attack). It may help to clarify some things. As I understand it the decision also is about clinical signs as well. I was on holiday at the time of my heart attack and even though I was viewed as a ‘hot case’ potentially, I was sat on for 6 days before angiogram because one of their labs were broken! I presume As long as medication was given aspirin etc and you were resting and not causing further damage i don’t think the 2 hours is accurate unless for some people it’s a clinical need there and then and in which case I am sure it would have been done.

Here is the link. pathways.nice.org.uk/pathwa...

Hope this helps clarify your concerns

Take care

Zena

[MichaelJH Heart Star]

Agree with Zena. There are many causes of heart attacks. Whilst the majority are caused by blockages there are other causes such as irregular heart beat. Not everyone that has a heart attack needs stents and some coronary narrowings are not treatable by stents. The critical time is the time to delivery of initial care and stabilisation, In addition to aspirin clot dissolving drugs may be administered and other drugs like BP medication. So I think you have nothing to worry about. Sometimes when emergency stenting is done the patient has to return for further stents when they have had time to recover from the initial heart attack.

[Auctioneerjim]

Thanks for the information! I think it’s all a bit overwhelming at the time and doesn’t sink in what’s going on !

[skid112 Heart Star]

Hi there, did you receive any treatment to alleviate the heart attack? GTN spray, any other meds? if so this would have eased the pressure on the part of the heart that could possibly have been damaged and certainly in a lot of cases no permanent damage has been done.

For me, I was told after about a week there was no permanent damage having been in casualty for about 6 hours, then kept in hospital until my quad was done. The only tests I had were bloods the first day, followed in the next week by angio, MRI and untrasound

[Plumbtorre]

I had what I thought was a chest infection . It was getting worse even with antibiotics. One day I called an ambulance because I was having difficulty breathing. I ha internal blood leaks which had lowered my heamaglobin down to 5 ( normal is 15 ) the paramedics told me they though I had had a heart attack a couple of weeks before and bluelighe'd me to hospital

I was surprised , I just thought it was a really bad day. Anyway fromthis I had lots of tests and ended up having a triple bypass and a replacement mv. The specialist told me that the heart attack had not affected my heart long term and I was lucky really it led to the tests that uncovered serious problems that I knew nothing about. So a couple of hours probably wouldn't make a difference. But that's only my opinion from my experience.

If you read more on this forum you will realise that every case and every person is different. Good luck