what is the diffrence between a heart attack and heart failure?

Answer 1

Put simply, a heart attack is where one of the coronary vessels blocks and a piece of heart muscle, cut off from its blood supply either dies or is badly damaged.

Heart failure is where a weakened heart causes a problem with its ability to pump. This causes fluid to accumulate in the lungs and sometimes in the legs. heart failure often follow on from a heart attack.

Answer 2

Hear failure does not mean death. It means the heart is not pumping as well as it should and can be managed with medication. It does not lead to instant death. Heart failure happens over time. However; there are many reasons for heart failure such as cardiomyopathy, myocarditis, or a virus that attacks the heart muscle. That does not mean the person is dying.

Heart attack is when a blood vessel becomes blocked with a clot starving the heart of blood for that area, causing the heart muscle in that area to die. this does cause instant death if you miss the signs or the blockage is too severe.

Answer 3

A heart attack is when the fatty deposits (low density lipoprotiens) block the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart.
A heart failure however is when any problem arises which stops the heart from doing its job i.e. pumping blood around the body. A heart attack can be classified as a heart faliure.

Answer 4

Having had four heart attacks over the last fifteen years, my Medic Alert bracelet says I suffer from heart failure. You do not necessarily die because you have heart failure or a heart attack. Beta blockers, which I take almost by the handful, control my blood pressure to stop my heart overworking.

Answer 5

A heart attacks happens when the heart gets starved of the nourishment it needs by fats clogging up around the heart and heart failure happens when the heart is still beating but it can not longer pump the blood around the body because the hearts "pump" has failed.

Answer 6

A heart attack is when the heart muscle has been damaged -- usually by a blocked coronary artery. A heart attack can often times be fatal, but as medical progression occurs, the chance of death is decreasing. This damage can be minor or severe. Often times when it is severe, it can lead to heart failure. Heart attacks can be prevented by several medications -- aspirin, beta blockers, statins, ace-inhibitors, and can also be prevented by good eating habits (low-fat or Mediterranean diets) and daily exercise.

Heart failure is the failure of the heart to pump blood adequately to meet the demands of the body. It can occur because the heart muscle is too weak (due to heart attacks or other things--like viruses or even pregnancy), or it can occur when the heart muscle is not weak, but is too stiff--this usually occurs to people with long standing high blood pressure. Usually the most common symptom of this is shortness of breath. It is treated with diuretics, ace-inhibitors, beta-blockers, statins, and even some pacemakers.

Answer 7

A heart attack, or myocardial infarction, is when the blood flow to a part of the myocardium (the muscle of the heart) is interrupted, causing tissue death. In Killip class I and II heart attacks, the heart overall continues to function pretty normally, and mortality is low, and that mortality is generally from electrical rhythm disturbances. In Killip class III, there's heart failure, and in class IV complete pump failure, with higher mortality.
Heart failure has to do with a weakening of the contractile force of the heartbeat. It can be from a heart attack, or lesser ischemic disease, but that's not necessarily so, and it's often caused by the constant stress of uncontrolled high blood pressure. Even things like beri beri can cause the muscle to be less strong than is needed to do the job. Conceptually, you can think of this as the equivalent of a skeletal muscle not being able to work from poor conditioning or injury, but with a skeletal muscle, the consequense may be that you can't lift a weight, but if it's heart muscle, it's more serious.
Until the widespread use of beta-adrenergic blocking drugs and angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors, heart failure patients died within five years of diagnosis. Those treatments have extended things somewhat.

Answer 8

coronary heart attack A circulate or 'plumbing' situation of the middle motives a coronary heart attack whilst a number of of of the arteries turning in blood to the middle are blocked. Oxygen contained in the blood can not attain the middle muscle, and the middle muscle turns into broken. coronary heart Failure an electric powered situation contained in the middle motives surprising Cardiac Arrest whilst the middle's decrease chambers all of sudden strengthen a speedy, superb rhythm inflicting the ventricles to quiver particularly than settlement. This renders the middle an ineffective pump which could no longer grant the physique and methods with oxygen.

Answer 9

A diagnosis of heart failure does not mean you're dead. It means the heart isn't beating as strongly as it should be. There are different stages of heart failure.

A heart attack is caused by a blockage in a blood vessel in the heart and stops blood flow in the heart.

Answer 10

heart failure is where the heart is not functioning as it should be. My husband had less than 12% of his hearts function for nearly 5 years, gradually getting worse. He had to have a transplant to survive, which was successful and improved his life 100%. He had no chest pains while he was ill, but he was short of breath, swollen with fliud, had stomach ache all the time and was always in bed propped up with about 6 pillows.
He never had a heart attack, which is where i believe the heart has a clot of blood or fatty tissue pass through it and it kills off part of the heart, which can lead to heart faliure.
But my husbands heart got worse over a time scale, but nothing like a blockage caused it. As his heart got more damaged it tried to repair itself by growing bigger, but this leads to other problems. His old heart was the size of a rugby ball when it was removed. The doctors said it was like a sponge instead of being muscle, and instead of having powerful contractions to move the blood around his body. his heart was like small shivers, and that is how they expalined his heart faliure to me.
Both are bad, and both can kill.
I think people think heart faliure means the heart stops, which it does, but it can be a slow and progressive thing too.