Medical Terminology of Myocardial Infarction: Heart Attack

What is Medical Terminology? The healthcare industry is consistently growing with convenient technologies and a better understanding of the human body. However, there are easier ways for doctors or physicians to evaluate their patients through a standardized language that the medical field use in order to understand diagnosis, and accurately share patient information, and medical procedures. Through biomedical science, doctors are able to apply their knowledge using medical terminologies from their studies on how to treat diseases and their understanding of how the organs and body systems work by properly using the correct terms to diagnose where medical professionals are able to understand and make the documentation easier. Medical terminologies have a basic rule of how the word is built, such as having a prefix, word root, and suffix. With all three combined, it creates a medical term. For example, ‘peri-’ is a prefix meaning around, ‘cardi-’ is a root word meaning heart, and ‘-itis’ is a suffix meaning inflammation; so when the words are combined, it makes pericarditis meaning there is an inflammation around the outer sac of the heart. The use of medical terminology is very important that not only does it helps physicians understand their patient’s diagnosis and information, it creates hundreds of thousands of words by combining the word root, prefix, and suffixes. It also describes many things such as diagnosis, symptoms, tools for medical use, or even specific diseases.

Myocardial Infarction (MI), also known as heart attack, is a good example of medical terminology. ‘Myo-’ meaning relating to muscles, ‘cardi-’ meaning heart, and ‘infarction’ means the obstruction of the blood supply to an organ. When they are combined, it defines the term of an obstruction of the blood supply to the heart muscle, heart attack. What is a heart attack? This occurs when the blood flow to the heart is reduced or cut off due to the narrowing of the coronary arteries because there are a build-up of plaque or fatty substances. According to a ThedaCare article, coronary artery disease (CAD) could lead to heart attack due to atherosclerosis, where it mainly affects the arteries in the heart through the buildup of plaque that causes an obstruction of the flow of the blood, leading to chest pain, a trip to the ICU (intensive health care)/ CCU (Coronary care unit) or death. In the NIH article, the main causes of a heart attack are plaque building up in the arteries, which causes a blood clot to form. When it is too much, the plaque could rupture, leading to a blocked blood flow and the heart will start to fail due to lack of oxygen. However, a less cause of heart attack such as severe spasm of a coronary artery could be from taking hardcore drugs such as cocaine, being a heavy smoker, or just from emotional stress. About 1 out of 100 men start to develop signs of heart attack starting at age 45, where the risk starts. Although, for women, it is the same but they happen to start experiencing signs about 10 years later than men, and when they go through menopause.

So what are the signs and symptoms to look out for? A Heart attack risk slowly increases we get older of age and so it can cause mild Angina pectoris, which is a discomfort in the chest or CP, and so over time it might come and go for several hours. This occurs when there is not enough oxygen-enriched blood getting delivered to the heart muscle. Another common symptom would be dyspnea and shortness of breath/SOB. Typically, dyspnea is a sign of heart attack or even ischemic heart disease when it occurs when you are resting or doing the very bare minimum of physical activity. Other common signs and symptoms include N/V (nausea/vomiting), presyncope which is when a person experiences lightheadedness and fainting, hypertension (HTN) which is excessively high blood pressure, and tachycardia which is also a sign of dysrhythmia, when an individual is experiencing an abnormal rate and rhythm of their heartbeat where it is either too slow (tachycardia), or too fast (bradycardia). A tool that specializes in measuring the blood pressure (BP) of a patient is the blood pressure cuff, also known as the sphygmomanometer. Nonetheless, when the heart is beating in an irregular pace, it could lead to heart failure since the myocardial is working twice as hard since it could not pump blood and distribute the nutrients and oxygen properly to our organs.

There are multiple ways to diagnose a patient who is experiencing symptoms of myocardial infarction such as blood tests, EKG/ECG, or coronary angiography. It is very common for physicians to practice the study through a blood test, and often so it is done a couple of times to make sure there are no other signs of diseases, and to check for changes over time. According to the NIH article, when a heart attack occurs, the myocardium gets damaged and so it releases proteins into the bloodstream. This way, the blood test can determine if the proteins in the bloodstream are higher than normal levels and that indicates a heart attack. There are multiple ways to perform a blood test such as a troponin test, CK/CK-MB test, and a serum myoglobin test. According to the MedlinePlus article, a troponin test measures the amount of troponin proteins in the blood, and so the normal range is between 0 and 0.40, if the troponin results are above 0.4 ng/mL, it indicates a positive result that you might or have had a heart attack. Another way would be an EKG, also known as an electrocardiogram. The purpose of an EKG is to record the electrical activity of the heart and detect the cardiac rhythm for signs of dysrhythmia. If necessary, electrocardiography, which is a process of recording the electrical activity of the heart, is also useful as it can further diagnose the patient. Lastly, coronary angiography is a test where they use dyes and a special x-ray to view the insides of your coronary arteries in order to locate the blockages and prevent any further damage. The doctor will perform a procedure called cardiac catheterization, which is a thin tube (cath) inserted into a blood vessel like an IV, but instead in the arm, neck, or in the upper thigh. As the tube is well inserted in the coronary arteries, it releases colorful dyes into the bloodstream where they take a special x-ray for the purpose of viewing the flow of the dyes through the coronary arteries, to study the flow of blood throughout the heart, and the blood vessels in order to determine whether they should perform a procedure of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to restore better and efficient blood flow.

According to an NIH article, a heart attack is very sudden and can occur at any time, so the quickest way to treat and prevent further any damage to the myocardium is by acting fast by calling 9-1-1. Once a patient had been diagnosed with a heart attack at the first symptom, they will start an immediate treatment right away and that includes taking aspirin so the blood clotting would stop. In the CDC article, it states that in some cases when a heart attack occurs, it requires cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), or an electrical shock (defibrillation) to the heart so it would start pumping again and keep the person’s heart beating. Once the doctor has confirmed that their diagnosis is positive, they will move on to other treatments such as certain medicines, medical procedures, lifestyle/diet changes, and cardiac rehabilitation. Most likely, the doctor will be prescribing more than one medicine to treat low blood pressure or to normalize blood cholesterol, and medicines to prevent further blood clotting. Anticoagulants are blood thinners that will prevent blood clotting, and prevent any existing clots from damaging the arteries and from getting larger. Another certain medicine would be statin medicine, which it normalizes and lowers the blood cholesterol so it decreases the chances of future heart attack or even stroke. Another treatment option is medical procedures; surgeons will perform a procedure called coronary artery bypass grafting. The purpose of CABG is to provide a new route for blood to flow around the diseased coronary artery to the heart muscle by removing a healthy artery or vein from the body and grafting in order for the blood to flow around and bypass the blocked area of the coronary artery. After a medical procedure, the doctor may recommend having a heart-healthy lifestyle change including eating healthier food, being more physically active, quitting smoking if the patient is a heavy smoker, and managing stress in order to lower the chances of a future heart attack. Some helpful guides to have a healthier lifestyle is by changing their diets with healthier food such as leafy green vegetables, fat-free dairy for lower cholesterol and fewer calories, and high protein-rich food such as fish considering that fishes are high in omega-3 fatty acids. Although, there are some food limitations such as limiting saturated fats, consumption of alcohol, and especially sodium as it can increase high blood pressure. As we get older, it is important to exercise and be more physically active on the regular in order to help lose excess weight, manage high blood pressure, and lowers the chances of other heart diseases. Just about moderate aerobic activity, three times a week could make a huge difference on the body and the heart. Stress also plays a role on how some heart attack occurs; when a person feels emotionally upset, particularly angry, it can trigger a heart attack or chest pain due to high blood pressure. Some ways to manage stress is by talking to a professional counselor, practicing meditation, being more social and around loved ones, or also being physically active which improves mental health. Lastly, cardiac rehabilitation is also another option to recover from a heart attack by going to rehab where it is a medically supervised program that can be very beneficial. It includes education, counseling, and even training where an occupational therapist or mental health specialists can physically and mentally help a patient who’s had a recent heart attack; it is a very helpful program since it contains multiple activities that will not only heal the patients from a traumatic experience, but also help their health, and their well-being.

Overall, a single specific disease includes numerous amount of medical terminologies to describe symptoms, the process of diagnosis, and even treatments. Myocardial infarction is one of them as an example, and it shows how important it is to use the proper terms and abbreviations when diagnosing so the physicians are able to share accurate information about their patients. Biomedical science is about how the organs and body symptoms function in the human body, and mainly focuses on the physiology of the anatomy, as well as treating human diseases. Therefore, medical terminology plays an important role in modern health care professions and biomedical science, both in practice and education, where such as doctors and physicians use medical terminologies to specifically and accurately report diagnoses, prescribed medicine and use abbreviations to save time and space for documentations.