Bowel Heart Attack?

Question

my brother in law has just died from a rare condidition of the bowel--calles Bowel Heart Attack--could you please tell me what this means exactly .

Thank you Beth

Answer 1

Sorry to hear about that, I don't know what a bowel heart attack is though

Answer 2

Never heard of a "Bowel Heart Attack", but having worked in a hospital for a long time there is a condition called "Vasovagal Response" which is when a person's blood pressure drops (hypotension) causing one to faint and is usually not fatal. If the person has an underlying medical condition though it could be. I have seen many patients have this response and some have died. Happens often when a patient is straining to have a bowel movement.

Good luck on the info Beth, hope this helps some.

Answer 3

Just a point of clarification - the medical term for the condition is called a bowel infarction. The process is similar to that of a myocardial (heart muscle aka heart attack) infarction. Of course your heart has nothing to do directly with your bowel. It was just your doctor's attempt to explain what happened simply.

The process usually involves a rupture of arterial plaque that then propagates a series of reactions that promote turning the blood from a liquid to a solid (clotting) as a natural way to heal the injury. In this case however the clot is on the inside of the artery and contributes to the blockage, causing a block in the flow of blood. Lack of oxygen via lack of blood supply equals cell death....this happening over a large area equals an infarction.

Strokes by the way can happen in a similar way, as well as having an embolic source (clot from one place, usually the heart to the brain) or hemorrhagic (a vessel breaking and bleeding out into the brain).

I am sorry to hear about your loss. Good luck.

Answer 4

So sorry.

Anytime a blood clot travels through the body and gets lodged into a vessel where it cannot move, it cuts that vessel off from receiving oxygenated blood. That part of the body will DIE. A heart attack is where the clot enters the vessels which feed oxygen to the heart muscle itself and gets stuck, causing a section of the heart of die due to lack of oxygen.

This can happen in any part of the body, any part. You are just used to hearing about "heart" attacks.

What happened to your BIL was the same thing as a "heart" attack, except the clot got stuck in a vessel which FEEDS the bowel tissue with oxygenated blood. Had it been in the brain, it would be a STROKE. In the lungs, a Pulmonary Embolism (CLOT which moves).

It is the same event, just a different location than the heart. Anyplace blood travels in the body is a location for a clot to travel and then get stuck and kill off whatever is shut off from O2.

Answer 5

I am not familiar with a "bowel heart attack" and would be very skeptical if such a thing even exist! However, just to set the record straight from reading some of the comments, folks have their facts a bit mixed up. A heart attack is actually when the build up of cholesterol inside your coronary vessels breaks loose which then in turn continues to build at a rapid rate until the vessel is completely occluded causing a "heart attack"! This is what my cardiologist explained to me and there are no "blood clots" floating around inside your plumbing. If there are, they are generally associated with "strokes"! This is why heart patients such as myself take cholesterol drugs like Lipitor and others to prevent build up in your coronary arteries.

Answer 6

What happened is a blockage in the blood supply to his small intestines (guts or Bowels) This kills off the guts and you can not get the food you need.

Answer 7

i think you may be referring to a an acute bowel or ischemic bowel. It is not a heart attack, but a portion of the bowel is dead

Answer 8

maybe some veins which are in bowel are been closed, which causes heart attack!

Answer 9

wtf. Your heart is not in your bowels. How is this possible?