What to do about symptoms of a pending heart attack?

September 17, 2011 10:58 PM

What to do if someone has symptoms of a pending heart attack but can't go to a doctor until later/tomorrow?

Is there anything that can be done to alleviate the symptoms? What to do while waiting?

posted by aielen to Health & Fitness (34 answers total)

Best answer: You go to an emergency room, immediately.
posted by dfriedman at 11:00 PM on September 17, 2011 [25 favorites]

Best answer: Go to the emergency room, or contact emergency services immediately. There is no waiting on a heart attack.
posted by iamabot at 11:00 PM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Best answer: 3rding emergency room. This is nothing to screw around with. It's much harder to recover from a heart attack than to (hopefully) prevent one. This has to happen right now.
posted by Gilbert at 11:03 PM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Call an ambulance, that's what they're there for.
posted by smoke at 11:03 PM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You have symptoms of a pending heart attack imminent death?! Get help immediately!
posted by sninctown at 11:04 PM on September 17, 2011 [5 favorites]

Best answer: No matter how incredibly inconvenient going to the hospital right now might be, it's still significantly less inconvenient than maybe dying.
posted by involution at 11:11 PM on September 17, 2011 [8 favorites]

Best answer: Alleviate the symptoms? Like dying? Call 911 now. Go to a hospital.
posted by sanka at 11:16 PM on September 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

Best answer: There are zero people who will tell you waiting (even until "later") is even an option for heart attack symptoms. You need to call 911 or go immediately to the nearest emergency room. Anything that might be ruined by going to the hospital are going to really be ruined by someone dying. Seriously. Because what happens after symptoms of an impending heart attack is, well, a heart attack. And those usually kill people if they aren't, say, on their way to the hospital in an ambulance.

If this person suddenly passes out before you get medical attention, check for breathing, and if it's stopped, start chest compressions immediately (paced to the beat of staying alive by the bee gees), pressing on the sternum (middle of the chest) while someone else dials 911.
posted by smartypantz at 11:22 PM on September 17, 2011 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Like everyone else has said, you must call an ambulance immediately and get the person to an emergency ward. My friend's husband started having heart attack symptoms; she said she was going to call the ambulance; he threw up and said he felt better and she shouldn't call the ambulance after all. She called anyway, and he went into cardiac arrest shortly after arriving at the hospital. (He was revived and underwent surgery.) She learned later that he would have died if she had waited much later to call the ambulance. It happens awfully quickly and whoever you are talking about needs to be in a hospital pronto, because heart attacks don't wait. And it should ideally be in an ambulance in case s/he goes into arrest on the way.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:25 PM on September 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

Best answer: This is an excellent and quick to the point demonstration of what to do if the person collapses: Official AHA Hands-Only CPR Demo Video
posted by smartypantz at 11:32 PM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Five minutes of 'I don't know if I want to actually go to the hospital' almost killed my friend. Luckily, he's still alive two months later, although he still has a-fib issues.

This is literally what emergency rooms are designed for.
posted by Heretical at 11:33 PM on September 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

Best answer: What to do while waiting? You mean for the ambulance to show up? You make them read this. TAKE THEM TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM. Please. Immediately.
posted by phunniemee at 11:34 PM on September 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

Best answer: And the same CPR instructions set to the music: Stayin' Alive (skip ahead to 35 seconds).
posted by smartypantz at 11:36 PM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Best answer: WTF. Hospital right now. I'm a doctor's kid, and these insurance obsession questions drive me insane. Yes, healthcare in the US is messed up, but the doctors will SAVE YOUR LIFE and you can work out payment plans later. The doctors are on your side. They will SAVE YOU. That is their job, and their life purpose.
posted by sweetkid at 11:44 PM on September 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Do what I did -- don't go to the emergency room, esp if you can't afford it and stuff. And then die, like I did, from the friggin heart attacks that surely did attack me.

Don't fuck around. Call 911 unless you're way away from a city or extremely close to a hospital, that way if he croaks on the way to the hospital he is at least with people who can save his life. Otherwise, shove an aspirin into his head and jam him in your car and GO RIGHT NOW!
posted by dancestoblue at 11:51 PM on September 17, 2011 [13 favorites]

Best answer: This freaks me out. I knew someone who died because he didn't want to go to the hospital with symptoms of a heart attack, because he had no insurance... he was hoping "it would go away". It didn't and he left a widow and small child behind. Second case - a friend went for weeks dragging his left foot and half paralyzed because he didn't have insurance, again, hoping "it would get better", until he could no longer tie his shoes and a friend simply took him - under protest - to the emergency, where they immediately took him to surgery; today, he's not paralyzed from the stroke (he's only 42), thanks to finally being taken to the emergency.

Bottom line: call 911 - NOW!
posted by VikingSword at 12:08 AM on September 18, 2011

Best answer: Have him chew 2 aspirins RIGHT NOW and chase it with a little water. Do this while waiting for the ambulance that should be on its way, CALL 911 or your local emergency number.
posted by kamikazegopher at 12:14 AM on September 18, 2011

Best answer: "A doctor" can't do much without a hospital. Go to one.
posted by bleep at 12:20 AM on September 18, 2011

Best answer: Don't be silly. Heart attacks are FATAL. Emergency room, NOW, by any means necessary.
posted by Decani at 12:28 AM on September 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: thanks for the advice. we're at the hospital now.
posted by aielen at 12:38 AM on September 18, 2011 [16 favorites]

You did the right thing for sure. Thank you for following up--I hope everything turns out OK.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:41 AM on September 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

I was just high-speed scrolling down to pile on the Call an Ambulance Now message. Hopefully, it was a false alarm, and you did 100% the right thing regardless. Best of luck.
posted by itstheclamsname at 12:58 AM on September 18, 2011

Keep us posted how he/she is doing, if you can.
posted by crapmatic at 2:17 AM on September 18, 2011

Response by poster: heart is apparently ok for now but they suspect it could be something else :( Still in the process of finding out. Thank you all, so much, for the support & sense... it's funny; if someone else had posted the question I would have thought it was a no-brainer to head to the emergency room immediately... but somehow it was/is a lot harder to think straight when immersed in the actual situation. Once again, thank you for the prompt replies... seeing all of them say the same thing helped reinforce the decision. Thanks.
posted by aielen at 4:48 AM on September 18, 2011 [8 favorites]

Enroll in an accredited first aid course as soon as you can get on one.
posted by tel3path at 6:57 AM on September 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

It actually happens more often than you would expect that people delay care for heart attack symptoms or are in denial about their symptoms. That's why Elizabeth Banks and the American Heart Association recently made this excellent video to raise awareness.

By the way, regarding the advice to take aspirin, that is accurate - it's one of the most well-proven lifesaving interventions for heart attack, and the appropriate dose is anything more than 162mg - that's 2 baby aspirin or one full aspirin. But taking an ambulance to the hospital (and NOT driving yourself or having someone else drive you) is the most important thing. Don't put others at risk by going into cardiac arrest behind the wheel, and don't put your family or friends into the position of having to choose whether to give chest compressions or keep driving. (I once asked someone "if he goes into cardiac arrest while you're trying to save money by not taking an ambulance, what are you going to do at that point?" He just looked at me and said "oh, we'd just call the paramedics if that happened.") :-\

hope your family member or friend is doing OK!
posted by treehorn+bunny at 9:32 AM on September 18, 2011

er, to be more clear, not *anything* about 162mg. What I was trying to convey was that a single baby aspirin (81mg) is not enough. You don't need to take any more than 325mg, the regular full size dose, to get the lifesaving effect. ianyd.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 9:35 AM on September 18, 2011

Seriousness is defined by a heart attack (the expression: As serious as a heart attack..)

Medical attention/911 asap.

(I don't understand how the OP decided & had the time to log in and post a question here...maybe this site is a dangerous distraction?!)
posted by Kruger5 at 10:20 AM on September 18, 2011

FWIW -- about 7 years ago I thought I might be starting to have a heart attack so I decided to play it safe and go to the ER (uninsured at that). I got a full workup with EKG and bloodwork. Turns out my heart was 100% normal and the doctor was certain it was reflux. Of course it took $1800 to find that out, but that's probably the only full workup I ever had and it helped me to focus on solving the reflux symptoms through diet and low-grade meds, and it gradually went away completely over several months. So the ER trip seemed like a waste back then but if I hadn't gone, I may not have worked on the actual problem and might have done a lot of unfounded worrying over the years ahead.
posted by crapmatic at 11:08 AM on September 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

(I don't understand how the OP decided & had the time to log in and post a question here...maybe this site is a dangerous distraction?!)

If you don't ever log out, it takes less than a minute to post a question. You can read above how the responses influenced their decision to go to the ER. They were already waiting to go to the doctor tomorrow, right? Why not ask here?
posted by oneirodynia at 11:55 AM on September 18, 2011

For future reference: your insurance card may have on it a phone number for a 24-hour advice nurse. If so, keep that in mind for the next time you're dithering on whether to go to the emergency room, or otherwise trying to figure out how urgent your medical need is. The advice nurse is trained in helping stressed-out people make that very decision.
posted by brainwane at 12:39 PM on September 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

By the way, this may not apply to the OP but as someone who experiences some of the symptoms of a heart attack on a pretty regular basis thanks to panic, I found this a useful read.
posted by Bookhouse at 2:11 PM on September 18, 2011

aielen: "heart is apparently ok for now but they suspect it could be something else"

It could be something else such as acid reflux - it uses the same pain path (this happened to my mum). But it just as easily could have been your friend's heart. I'm glad you went.
posted by deborah at 3:05 PM on September 18, 2011

Thanks for this question. Because I read it I was much less freaked out about my mum having to call an ambulance this afternoon. I was the calm one and able to shoot down other plans such as "drive to the hospital".

(she's ok, at the hospital getting tests done.)

Now I just have to sit around and wait. urgh the waiting!
posted by titanium_geek at 10:41 PM on September 20, 2011 [1 favorite]