Eli5: How do doctors save people from a heart attack?
In: Biology
The immediate treatment is to give the person medications to break up any clots in the arteries of the heart and to widen the blood vessels to restore blood flow. The next step is to do some kind of imaging of the heart (CT, MRI, angiogram…etc) to show which blood vessels in the hear are blocked and the extent of the blockage. Then, they can do surgery if necessary. Typically, this will be either to place a stent or a bypass. A stent is a small hollow mesh tube that the surgeon will place it the blocked artery. The mesh tube expands and keeps the artery open. For a bypass, the surgeon will take small blood vessels from elsewhere in your body and graft them to the heart in a path that goes around (aka bypasses) the blocked artery.
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