Eli5: what is the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest?
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ER nurse here, a heart attack is when there’s inadequate blood flow to the heart usually caused by a blockage in the blood supply to the heart. Usually you will see things in the blood we can check for to tell us if someone had one, and in the case someone is having a very big one our monitoring equipment can see it, in subtle changes to the way the electricity in their heart is moving. Heart attacks CAN cause a cardiac arrest, but they don’t actually do it most of the time.
A cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating for any reason- including a heart attack, but also many other causes.
The terms are often used as if they are the same thing but they are definitely NOT.
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