Heart attack

When you have a heart attack, everything may seem to be happening very quickly. At Aurora, we believe in delivering immediate testing and treatment that’s right for you. You can be assured we’ll provide the fastest, most expert heart attack care, putting you on the road to the quickest recovery possible.

Here’s why you can count on our specialists to help you in preventing, diagnosing and treating a heart attack:

• Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center is the only hospital in Milwaukee – and one of only a few nationwide – with cardiologists on-site 24/7, to clear clogged arteries immediately. This means we have some of the shortest times in the country to open a blocked coronary artery during a heart attack.
• We’re one of the few hospitals in the nation to receive a 3-star rating – the highest quality category – from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and valve surgeries. We perform nearly 1,000 CABG procedures every year with excellent results.
• We offer one of the largest cardiac rehabilitation programs for follow-up care after a heart attack in Wisconsin.

What is a heart attack?

A heart attack, sometimes called a myocardial infarction, happens when blood is prevented from reaching your heart through one or both coronary arteries. The coronary arteries are the main blood vessels that supply your heart with oxygen-rich blood. Without enough oxygen, the heart muscle can be damaged or killed.

The most dangerous type of heart attack is an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), which happens when blood flow to the heart is completely blocked. STEMI is sometimes called a full-blown heart attack.

What’s the difference between a heart attack and cardiac arrest?

Sometimes, people use the terms heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest interchangeably, but they have different causes. A heart attack occurs when blood stops flowing to your heart. A sudden cardiac arrest happens when the heart stops beating because of an electrical problem like arrhythmia or atrial fibrillation.

Warning signs of a heart attack

Getting medical help as soon as possible for a suspected heart attack can save your life.

If you think you may be having a heart attack, call 911 right away.

• Don’t wait to see if the symptoms go away.
• Don’t try to drive yourself to the emergency department.

Heart attack symptoms

The most common heart attack symptoms include:

• Chest pain or discomfort: Men most often feel crushing chest pain as symptoms of a heart attack. It may last more than a few minutes, or it may come and go. It might feel like pressure, squeezing, fullness, indigestion or pain.
• Pain or discomfort in the upper body: Women may feel chest pain, but they may also feel pain in their arms, back, neck or jaw as symptoms of a heart attack. Men may experience these signs, too.
• Fatigue: Women especially may experience fatigue during a heart attack.
• Shortness of breath
• Breaking out in a cold sweat
• Lightheadedness, sudden dizziness, nausea or vomiting
• Rapid or irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia)

Sometimes, a heart attack is intense and happens suddenly. Other times, it can come on slowly. A heart attack can even be silent without any symptoms. This is more likely if you’re elderly, female or diabetic and have a heart attack. You may not recognize any symptoms of a heart attack or even know you’ve had one until your doctor discovers it during a routine exam.

Men and women may experience symptoms of a heart attack differently.

Learn more about heart disease in women.

Heart attack causes & risk factors

There are several health conditions that can slow or stop blood flow to your heart and lead to a heart attack. These causes of heart attack can include:

• Blood clots, which are the cause of most heart attacks, can block the coronary artery.
• Plaque may form blockages if you have coronary artery disease or atherosclerosis.
• Coronary artery spasm, or sudden tightening, in one of your coronary arteries can trigger a heart attack if it lasts long enough.

Certain factors can increase your risk of heart attack. Some you can’t control, such as:

• Gender: Men are more likely to have a heart attack than women.
• Age: Men age 45 or older and women age 55 or older are more likely to have a heart attack.
• Family history of heart disease

You may be able to control other risk factors for heart attack. Talk with your doctor about managing:

• Smoking or tobacco use
• High cholesterol
• High blood pressure
• Physical inactivity
• Obesity
• Stress
• Diabetes
• Drug and alcohol abuse

Heart attack diagnosis

When you have a heart attack, we may give you several diagnostic tests to help us quickly and precisely determine what kind of heart attack you had and how severely it affected your heart. And even before a full diagnosis of a heart attack, we may begin your treatment, because we know getting you emergency heart care can improve your prognosis and outcome.

To diagnose a heart attack, we might use:

• Blood tests to check your oxygen levels and organ function
• Radiographic imaging, such as chest X-ray and cardiac CT scan, to see a picture of your heart and blockages
• Echocardiogram, or heart ultrasound, that shows your heart’s size and motion
• Electrocardiogram (EKG) to check your heart’s electrical activity
• Holter monitoring to track your heart’s activity for 24 to 48 hours at home
• Stress test to see how your heart functions when it’s working hard
• Cardiac catheterization, in which we thread a fine camera through a blood vessel to examine your arteries and heart

Find out more about our heart and vascular testing and diagnosis.

Heart attack treatment

After a heart attack or if you are at risk for one, we’ll talk with you about a treatment plan to protect your heart – and your future. Following a heart attack, we may recommend ways to improve your health and various treatment options, including:

• Lifestyle changes, such as healthy diet, stress reduction and exercise to reduce your heart attack risk and improve healing
• Medications, such as aspirin, clot-dissolving agents or cholesterol-lowering drugs
• Cardiac catheterization, such as coronary angioplasty, where we thread a thin tube through a blood vessel to the blockage to open the arteries for blood to flow freely again
• Thrombolysis within a few hours of a suspected heart attack, in which we inject clot-dissolving medications to restore blood flow in your coronary artery
• Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) to help your heart keep beating in rhythm
• Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery to reroute blood vessels and improve the blood supply to your heart
• Cardiac rehabilitation in your community, where our specialists give you extra support, education and coaching to get you on the road to recovery

Are you at risk for heart disease?

Knowing your risk factors of heart disease – the leading cause of death in the U.S. – can help you lower your chances of developing it. Our heart health quiz estimates your risk, determines which of your risk factors are controllable and gives you an idea what to do next based on your results.

Take the heart health quiz