Michael Jackson's Death: The Difference Between Heart Attacks And Cardiac Arrest

health.com:

Iconic pop star Michael Jackson suffered a cardiac arrest and died on Thursday at the age of 50. While details of his death have not yet been released, a cardiac arrest is generally much more dangerous than a heart attack.

During cardiac arrest, the heart actually stops beating and quivers with uncoordinated contractions. Unless a defibrillator is used to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm, death is inevitable. Someone experiencing a cardiac arrest generally collapses, loses consciousness, and stops breathing.

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Comments

[medicontheedge]

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

hey, huffpost... when you publish information, why not actually get info from people who know what they are talking about?

"cardiac arrest" is a broad term to describe the cessation of the heartbeat and respirations, which can be CAUSED by many things. heart attack, (damage to the cardiac vessels resulting in cardiac muscle damage), respiratroy arrest, (not breathing), or drugs, poison, injury, etc.

"cardiac arrest" is NOT treated by defibrillation. THAT is a specific form of a heart arrythmia that renders the heart unable to pump effectively. this arrythmia, ventricular fibrillation, if not corrected, will lead to cardiac arrest.

stop dumbing down information. it is almost always wrong information that we end up with.

[ConfuciusSay-]

Cardiac Arrest has nothing to do with "respirations". Maybe you're referencing CPR - they use it for "cardio-pulmonary arrest"?

It is a specific term used to reference one thing: the discontinuation of mechanically effective ventricular contractions. This is due to 2 major electrical causes: asystole and ventricular fibrillation. The latter is treatable with electroshock, but asystole is not.

It's possible to get a cardiac arrest without these, eg. electromechanical dissociation syndromes, cardiac tamponade, dissecting aortic aneurisms, rupture of a ventricular aneurism, but those are really rare.

Since fibrillation ends up in asystole given time, some authorities suggest that in the absence of an ECG, we should try shocking everybody in arrest. Nowadays, it's hard to find a defibrillator that is decoupled from monitoring equipment.

[medicontheedge]

and your ACLS expired when???