home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
CD-ROM Today (UK) (Spanish) 15
/
CDRT.iso
/
dp
/
0005
/
0005400.tid
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-01-17
|
1KB
|
28 lines
$Title{Myocardial Infarction}
A Medical Times Patient Education Chart
(C) Romaine Pierson Publishers, Inc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Myocardial Infarction-I
What is a Myocardial Infarction? The word infarct means an area of tissue
necrosis (death) due to significant interference with blood flow, nearly
always the result of occlusion (blockage) of the supplying artery.
Myocardium is the name for the muscular tissue of the heart. It is the
contraction (systole) and relaxation (diastole) of the myocardium that
comprises the heart beat.
Thus a myocardial infarction means the death of a portion of the muscle
tissue of the heart.
If the blood supply is blocked in a large vessel, a large area of muscle
can be affected (a so-called "massive heart attack"). If a small artery is
blocked, the area affected will be small, and thus the attack will be a minor
"heart attack." (The arterial system of the heart is illustrated below.)
Blockage of the artery usually is due to arteriosclerosis (narrowing of
the vessel by the buildup of plaque--see inset). This is similar to the
narrowing of a water pipe from mineral deposits. The narrowing is not,
however, uniform throughout the artery.
See the following page for the areas of infarction produced by blockage
of various arteries.