Many preventable cases have been hospitalized in intensive care cardiology in recent weeks, in particular because some people did not consult a specialist during confinement. How to recognize the signs of a stroke or a heart attack?
Thousands of people with cardiovascular disorders refused to consult a specialist during confinement, for fear of being infected with Covid-19 or of saturating hospital services. Result: as feared by cardiologists, avoidable hospitalizations in cardiology are more and more numerous.
“We have seen, over the past few weeks, in intensive care cardiology, patients with infarctions, severe heart failure that we usually anticipate. They are afraid to come to the hospital, afraid to disturb their doctor. It is time for our patients to think about their pathology”explains to The Dispatch Professor Michel Galinier, co-head of the cardiology department at the Toulouse University Hospital.
Stroke, myocardial infarction (or heart attack), high blood pressure, or angina pectoris… here are the symptoms of the 4 main cardiovascular diseases that should alert you and encourage you to call the Samu or consult a doctor.
Myocardial infarction
The myocardial infarction is the first cause to be evoked in front of an acute pain in the chest, in particular because the doctors have only 90 minutes to unclog the possible obstructed coronary artery. It is, in fact, caused by the sudden obstruction of a coronary artery which normally supplies the heart muscle with blood and oxygen. Deprived of oxygen, the cells of the myocardium will die very quickly. It is then necessary to unclog the artery to keep a functional heart and avoid complications which pose a vital risk.
Myocardial infarction is usually manifested by a sharp pain in the middle of the chest (behind the sternum), which is accompanied by an agonizing feeling of tightness in the chest, of oppression, evolving in waves or suddenly suddenly. The pain may radiate to the throat, jaw, left shoulder, arms, sometimes wrists. It may be associated with intense fatigue, sweating, pallor, shortness of breath, palpitations, malaise, a feeling of imminent death, or even nausea and vomiting. Sometimes complications such as dizziness and fainting occur within minutes.
However, the pain is not always so clear, especially in women, diabetics or the elderly. The infarction must then be evoked in the face of discomfort, sudden shortness of breath, unusual sensations in the left arm associated with sudden and unexplained fatigue.
Cerebrovascular accident (CVA)
A stroke is the blockage or rupture of an artery in the brain. This is an absolute medical emergency because every second the patient loses thousands of nerve cells in the brain. The signs are extremely varied and depend on the exact location of the brain lesion, each part of this organ being specialized in particular functions (movement, sensitivity, vision, speech, etc.).
Among the most common signs are: loss of feeling or numbness in one or more limbs, face, or one side of the body, loss of vision in one eye or half of the visual field of each eye, or double vision, speech problems (either due to difficulty in articulating, or due to the use of incomprehensible words or difficulties in understanding what one hears), disorders of balance or coordination of the limbs with difficulty in walking, disturbances of alertness which can go as far as coma, or even a sudden, intense and unusual headache.
The regression of signs after a few minutes should in no way be reassuring: sudden neurological deficits regressing rapidly are transient ischemic attacks (TIA). They must also lead to immediate consultation.
High blood pressure
High blood pressure (HTA) is a hyperpressure of the blood on the wall of the arteries which will stiffen and age prematurely. Hypertension is a silent disease of the arteries which exposes you to a major risk of cardiovascular accidents, in particular myocardial infarction and stroke, as well as kidney failure.
Some signs can still alert such as headaches, the feeling of having flies flying in front of the eyes, the feeling of dizziness or ringing in the ears. These symptoms may be harmless, but they should prompt you to measure your blood pressure. In more serious situations, some signs are the manifestation of a complication of the disease. This may be pain in the chest or difficulty moving an arm. They reflect the consequences of neglected hypertension, more than a symptom directly linked to the disease.
From the age of 40, blood pressure should be measured at least once a year. Or earlier in case of family history, symptoms or a factor of rapid rise in blood pressure such as overweight, diabetes, or high cholesterol.
Angina pectoris
Angina pectoris (or angina) corresponds to chest pain related to the narrowing of a coronary artery and the reduction of blood supply in the muscular wall of the heart. The risk is that the artery in question becomes blocked completely, which will cause a myocardial infarction.
Angina pectoris is manifested by a deep pain located in the middle of the chest with an intense, agonizing feeling of tightness. This pain often occurs during physical exertion (fast walking, uphill, against the wind, in cold weather, because the latter also causes a reduction in the caliber of the vessels or even during an emotion that makes the heart beat faster and louder). More rarely, the pain occurs after meals, during digestion, or at rest, at night.
It can radiate to the left arm, the forearm, sometimes with a feeling of tightness in the wrist, in the neck, the lower jaw, sometimes in the right arm, the nape of the neck, the back or the region of the stomach.
Generally, the pain is relieved in less than two minutes by rest or by taking a drug that dilates the coronary arteries, but if it persists, you must call the Samu.
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