It looks very much: that someone grabs the chest and deposits to the ground with a heart attack. Is that painful? And is the moment of dying actually also painful?
We ask Marielle Emmelot-Vonk, professor of clinical geriatrics at UMC Utrecht. She first explains to us the difference between a heart attack, a heart attack and a cardiac arrest.
“Eventually everyone who dies stops the heart,” says Emmelot. “But we only use the term ‘cardiac arrest’ in the medical world if stopping the pump is the cause of death. Suppose you die from pneumonia, then the heart ultimately stops, due to lack of oxygen or due to the severe infection. But we don’t call that a cardiac arrest. “
A cardiac arrest can have various causes. “The best known and most common is the heart attack,” says Emmelot. “The medical term for this is a heart attack.” A heart attack acts as one or more coronary arteries, which provide the heart muscle with blood, get clogged. For example, due to a blood clot, often the result of arterial calcification. Part of the heart muscle then gets too little oxygen and is damaged. “Then the heart can no longer pump well, or a heart rhythm disorder occurs. The heart can therefore stop beating. “
Press the chest
Another possible cause is heart failure. The heart is then ‘exhausted’ because it has to work too hard. “For example as a result of vascular damage, too high blood pressure, defective heart valves or a heart muscle disease.”
Back to the heart attack: it costs in the Netherlands annually about five thousand people life; Around 37,000 end up in the hospital. Two thirds of them are husband.
“Three quarters of people with a heart attack experience enormous pressure on the chest,” says Emmelot. “As if a belt is being put on very tightly. Or as if an elephant stands on your chest. This is due to lack of oxygen from the heart muscle tissue. The pain can also radiate to the left arm or the jaw. “
If this really leads to a cardiac arrest, the person will lose consciousness within ten seconds, Emmelot emphasizes. “Then you don’t notice it anymore. People who are successfully resuscitated, report: it became black in front of the eyes and I don’t know anything from afterwards. ” These people can wake up with pain: it is not unusual that a few ribs break during the resuscitation.
Near-death experiences
If the person is not resuscitated, it will remain black. Emmelot: “After four to six minutes, serious brain damage occurs due to lack of oxygen and after about ten minutes the person really died. We assume that people don’t notice it. “
Even with other causes of death, it is unlikely that stopping the heart in itself is painful. “But of course we can’t investigate that. There are stories from people with near-death experiences: that they saw a beautiful light or other images. These people report no pain as far as I know. That is a nice idea, right? ”
About the pain at a heart attack, Emmelot still wants to emphasize something that everyone should know: “A heart attack presents itself differently in a quarter of the people, without pain. Many of them are women or the elderly. They have non -specific complaints: shortness of breath, nausea, abdominal pain, dizziness, sudden tiredness. As a result, the heart attack with them is unfortunately more often missed. We have to be alert to that. “