General overview on Heart Attack

What is heart and how it works?
The heart is a muscular pump located in the chest. Its job is to pump blood around the body via the circulatory system of blood vessels. The heart consists of 4 chambers: right atrium and right ventricle, and left atrium and left ventricle. The left and the right chambers of the heart doesn't communicate between them and are separated by a septum.
Blood is depleted of oxygen after circulating through the body. This blood returns into the right atrium. From there the blood flows into the right ventricle, which pumps the blood out to the lungs for oxygenation.

The oxygen-rich blood then returns to the left atrium. From there it flows into the left ventricle and is pumped out at high pressure into the aorta and then - arteries. The high pressure is generated by powerful contraction of the heart muscle, which is different from usual muscular tissue - it has its own capacity to contract without being stimulated.

The powerful heart contractions raises the pressure of the blood and enables it to flow through the extensive network of arteries to every part of the body and return to the heart. No doubt that for this service, heart will need a big amount of oxygen and energy. The heart is nourished by the blood supplied directly to the heart muscle through the Coronary Arteries. The strength of the heart muscle depends very much on this blood supply. The coronary arteries are usually strong, elastic, and quite flexible. The inner lining of the arteries is normally smooth. This allows the blood to flow smoothly without clotting. Heart attack is caused by sudden loss of blood and oxygen to your heart.

Coronary Heart Disease
The most common condition that predisposes a person to heart attack is coronary heart disease, or coronary artery disease, due to atherosclerosis, or fatty build up of plaque on the inner lining of coronary arteries. The plaque and resulting blood clots block the artery partially or completely, reducing the amount of blood that can flow through the artery to the heart. This cuts off the oxygen supply to part of the heart muscle.

If the blood supply is cut off long enough, that part of the heart muscle dies. This is a Heart Attack. If a large enough part of the heart muscle is affected, a dangerous rhythm disorder called ventricular fibrillation may occur. If this happens, the heart may stop. This is called cardiac arrest, and most people who have cardiac arrest die.

Despite immense medical progress in the last 3 decades, heart disease continues to be a major health problem in both industrialized and developing nations.

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