Most people think these are the same thing. They’re not! ❤️🫀 #HeartHealth #MedicalFacts #ICUNurse #HealthEducation #learnontiktok

A lot of people think a cardiac arrest is the same thing as a heart attack, and as a nice see-unus, I want to tell you why they're different. A heart attack is with an artery that's supplying blood to your heart gets blocked, so part of your heart muscle isn't getting enough oxygen and can die off, but the heart can still beat beating. Heart attacks are obviously extremely dangerous and can lead to a cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is much worse, and this is when the patient is almost every single time going to be unresponsive and either not breathing correctly or not breathing at all, and when you feel there's going to be no pulse. And the patient's heart rhythm is either in a rhythm that's not compatible with life and not pumping blood effectively through the body or it's not beating at all. And so this is when we have to start chest compressions and we're basically pumping the heart for you, so blood keeps flowing to your organs. And we also have to give breaths because you're not breathing and we need to breathe for you so that that blood pumping to your organs has oxygen. And if the patient is in one of those rhythms that are not compatible with life like v-fib or v-tack, we are going to shock the patient because we call that a shockable rhythm and we're going to give meds in between shocks. And if the patient has no heartbeat at all or asistally, we're just going to kind of hope the meds work because that is not a shockable rhythm.