Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is the sudden loss of all heart activity due to an irregular heart rhythm. Breathing stops. The person becomes unconscious. Without immediate treatment, sudden cardiac arrest can lead to death.
Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a condition in which the heart suddenly stops beating. When that happens, blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs. If it is not treated, SCA usually causes death within minutes.
Treatment. Half the deaths from a heart attack occur in the first 3 or 4 hours after symptoms begin. It is crucial that symptoms of a heart attack be treated as a medical emergency. A person with these symptoms should be taken to the emergency department of a hospital in an ambulance with trained personnel.
The most deadly type of heart attack is the ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI). STEMI is a total or nearly total blockage of a coronary artery that supplies oxygen-rich blood to part of the heart muscle. Lack of blood and oxygen causes that part of the heart to fail.
Coronary artery disease is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death, accounting for up to 80% of all cases.
The neurogenic mechanisms are poorly understood. However, in many cases, stress may precipitate cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death in vulnerable patients, presumably via centrally driven autonomic nervous system responses.
Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center or left side of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or that goes away and comes back. The discomfort can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain. Feeling weak, light-headed, or faint.
Sometimes the pain from a heart attack is sudden and intense, which makes them easy to recognize and get help. But, what about when it's not? Most heart attacks actually involve only mild pain or discomfort in the center of your chest. You may also feel pressure, squeezing, or fullness.
Fatty, cholesterol-containing deposits build up over time, forming plaques in the heart's arteries. If a plaque ruptures, a blood clot can form. The clot can block arteries, causing a heart attack. During a heart attack, a lack of blood flow causes the tissue in the heart muscle to die.
Is sudden cardiac death painful? Some people have chest pain during the initial seconds of sudden cardiac arrest. However, once you lose consciousness, you don't feel pain.
A conscious dying person can know if they are on the verge of dying. Some feel immense pain for hours before dying, while others die in seconds. This awareness of approaching death is most pronounced in people with terminal conditions such as cancer.
Symptoms. Cardiac arrest is quick and drastic: You suddenly collapse, lose consciousness, have no pulse, and aren't breathing. Right before it happens, you could be very tired, dizzy, weak, short of breath, or sick to your stomach. You may pass out or have chest pain.
Researchers suspect sleep apnea causes abnormal heart rhythms, which lead to sudden cardiac death, for a number of reasons. “Sleep apnea may lower oxygen levels, activate the fight-or-flight response and change pressure in the chest when the upper airway closes, stressing the heart mechanically,” he explains.
Patients with congestive heart failure have a high incidence of sudden cardiac death that is attributed to ventricular arrhythmias. The mortality rate in a group of patients with class III and IV heart failure is about 40% per year, and half of the deaths are sudden.
Studies have found that survival rates for people hospitalized for heart attacks are approximately 90%1 to 97%. 2 This varies based on the type of heart attack, which arteries are involved, and additional factors such as age and gender.
Cardiac arrest can be fatal if it lasts longer than 8 minutes without CPR. Brain damage can happen after just 5 minutes. Cardiac arrest treatment should start right away, even if you're not in the hospital.
“Forty to 50 percent of heart attacks present with a fatal event,” Dr. Chawla says. “People ignore symptoms, which are usually taking place for weeks or months before finally having a heart attack with complete blockage.
Most people having a heart attack do not die immediately, but some do. This is usually from a too-fast heart rhythm (ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation), but can also be from a heart attack-induced very slow heart rhythm, or from the heart just not being able to pump because too much of it is being damaged.
Having a heart attack can be frightening and traumatic, and it's common to have feelings of anxiety afterwards. For many people, the emotional stresses can cause them to feel depressed and tearful for a few weeks after returning home from hospital.
Next steps. Stress is unlikely to be fatal for most people, but prolonged exposure to stress can lead to mental and physical health problems, including death in severe cases. But dying from stress is unusual and is likely the result of a heart attack or another cardiovascular issue.
All the research suggests that long-term chronic stress can kill you unless you take appropriate action. It can damage your nervous system by generating a constant adrenaline rush. Excessive anger, negative emotional states and prolonged depression lead to high stress levels that can cause death.
If a shock to the system is sufficient enough it can trigger a massive surge of adrenaline, stunning your heart so severely it ceases to beat. Consider the case of a 60-year-old woman who was given terrible news about her husband's health.