smoking facts

- Causes of a Heart Attack -
Smoking Facts about the Causes of Myocardial Infarction

Two main causes of heart attack
- blot clots and spasms -

Both blood clot formation and coronary vessel spasm can cause a sudden blockage of blood flow to the heart muscle.

The smoking facts reveal that atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is one of the harmful effects of smoking and one of the direct causes of myocardial infarction.

Spasms of the coronary arteries can also cause a myocardial infarction and can be the result of the immediate cigarette smoking effects on the body.

What is a Heart Attack or Myocardial Infarction?

Heart attack is the common or lay term for myocardial infarction.

When oxygen is not delivered to an organ tissue death occurs. When this happens in an organ such as the heart it is called an infarct or infarction. Myocardial refers to the heart muscle.

The technical term, using proper medical terminology, is myocardial infarction.

Myo refers to the muscle and cardial refers to the heart.

The causes of a myocardial infarction and heart attack are the same.

This video clearly illustrates how a clot in a coronary artery can block the blood flow to the heart muscle resulting in myocardial infarction.

There are really two main causes of myocardial infarction. As shown in the video blood clots are one of the main causes.

However, a heart attack can result from any mechanism that suddenly restricts blood flow to the heart muscle. Sometimes this happens because of spasm in the coronary arteries. If this occurs in the presence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease the results will be more profound.

Blood Clots

caused by:

Spasm

caused by:
  • drugs (especially cocaine)
  • emotional stress and pain
  • exposure to extreme cold
  • cigarette smoking

The two main causes of a heart attack then are blood clots or spasm in the coronary blood vessels.

Both can be the result of the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes.

Blood clots arise from cardiovascular atherosclerosis disease. Spasms can be can be the result of the powerful vasoconstrictive effect of nicotine.

So we can see that there are two main causes of heart attack and both are among the possible harmful effects of smoking.

When the heart is damaged and cannot function as a pump a condition called congestive heart failure develops. This is sometimes a complication of myocardial infarction if there is a significant area of the heart that is damaged.

Congestive heart failure is also one of the many harmful effects of smoking and can result from the many related lung diseases caused by smoking.

Go back to Diseases Caused By Smoking - Facts on the Health Dangers of Smoking Cigarettes

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