How doctors jump start the heart during a heart attack?

Answer 1

A common mistake with "lay people" (people not medically trained) is they think a heart attack is a cardiac arrest. A cardiac arrest is when your heart stops beating (unless you have pulseless electrical activity, but that's another story); whereas, a heart attack is when one of your coronary (heart) arteries become either partially, or completely blocked off causing your heart to be starved of oxygen. You do not "jump-start" a heart attack, that would just make matters worse.

In cardiac arrest (what your thinking of), your cells are temp. dead for all intensive purposes. They may still quiver (ventricular fibrillation), or beat extremely fast from the wrong site, so fast it doesn't push in blood through your arteries because it doesn't have enough time to fill with blood (Ventricular Tachycardia). Your heart needs to have a rate between 60-100 to have a normal heart rate, below that can be dangerous because your heart wont pump fast enough to supply your body with blood. A rate too high (150+) will cause your heart to beat so fast it cannot fully fill with blood, therefore no blood is really getting to your body.

When someone gets "jump-started" it is called being defribrillated. When you defribrillate someone, you send 360 joules of electricity (depending on monophasic vs biphasic) through them, attempting to kill all electrical activity at once, hoping that right cells (SA node) start the heart beat again, in an orderly fashion.

A doctor will check a pulse first, begin CPR, and defribrillate the patient depending on the rhythm on the cardiac monitor. They will set up an IV at some point in time, and establish an airway usually through endotrachael intubation. They will administer drugs via intraveous line such as epinepherine, atropine, amiodarone, vasopressin, etc.

Source(s):EMT-Paramedic

Medical Student