Like if you get shot in the head, your death is obviously instantaneous (in most cases) because your brain is literally gone. Does that mean that after getting shot directly in your heart, you would still be conscious for a little while until your brain stops due to the inability to get fresh blood/oxygen to it?
In: Biology
Depending on the efficiency of your heart (ejection fraction and a few other parameters), if your heart stopped, your pressure would tank and you would lose consciousness pretty quickly, although, you would not be dead or even brain dead for a few minutes. The pressure created by your heart adds to the ability of your body to exchange oxygenated blood with deoxygenated blood!
Source: pacemaker technician.. sometimes people go sleepy if you run a test too long! đ
I had a major heart attack while running. I lost consciousness and fell like a ton of bricks. Skinned knees and small bite on my tongue. I was out for about 20 seconds when I came to (cardiologist said my heart stopped and was âstunnedâ. I came to with no assist which was witnessed by several medics. It was like a dream but it wasnât like Fred Sanford yelling âI see the light Elizabeth.â
No you don’t.
We often reset the heart in ED using medication or electric shocks if people have SVT – basically a super fast heart beat.
When taking the injection the heart stops for a couple of seconds – sometimes more – and when it restarts it often goes back to normal.
People do not go unconscious during the effects of the injection but they will always feel absolutely awful until the heart starts again.
So no. We do not go unconscious as soon as our heart stops.
We will go unconscious as soon as there isn’t enough oxygen in the brain.
Yeh exactly it depends what you mean by death. We used to think of it as a single event, and now more so as a process, as we discovered ways to bring people back from what we used to think of as âdeadâ.
So if you get shot in the head, we say death is instantaneous. It seems obvious, but unless the bullet hits a specific part of the brain, the heart will beat for a little longer afterwards, your liver might not notice for a while etc, but we have no way currently to save someone whoâs brain has stopped working due to bullet damage.
If your heart stops (letâs say from cardiac arrest instead of a bullet for this one) then the clock continues for the rest of the body (I say continue as they say weâre only ever a few minutes away from death, but each time we breathe this resets the clock). Each minute your heart is not pumping (either by itself or by CPR or something) increases your chances of dying by 10% I believe, so your body still has oxygen in it, this is quickly used up, and youâre not replenishing it, then your cells and organs start to die due to lack of oxygen. At some point (and this is an ever moving point) there will be a stage where our current medical capabilities will not be able to reverse the damage that has been done, and that point we call death.
But thatâs whatâs important, not the time, usually itâs a matter of minutes, but if you you have a cardiac arrest and fall into a frozen lake, breaking the ice and being surrounded by near freezing water for example, it could be a matter of hours, as the rate at which your cells die in that situation slows dramatically.
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