Cardiac 'Bruising' may Predict Worse Heart Attack

Bruising/Bleeding in Heart Muscle – Predicts Heart Attack

According to UK researchers, new way has been found to show if a heart attack tends to be severe and would be causing lasting harm, by just looking for bruising or bleed in the heart muscle. As per the Glasgow team, patients showing this sign on scans tend to develop serious problems such as heart failure. It is expected that the discovery could be helpful in preventing these types of complications. Around half a million people from UK seems to have heart failures and heart attacks have been the main cause.

It is said that heart failure could make the person unable to do the daily routine tasks like climbing the stairs. The symptoms tend to take place since the heart that is damaged does not have adequate strength to pump in blood efficiently in the body which makes the person breathless, untreated and tired. This could lead to the fluid accumulating in the legs and the lungs. Drugs are available which need to be taken on a long-term basis. Some of the victims having heart failure may also need to undergo a heart surgery.

Bleeding in Heart Muscle – Complications Later

The British Heart Foundation-funded work had followed more than 200 patients to check how they had fared during the hours, weeks and months after they had been admitted to the hospital following a heart attack. Researchers presenting their work at a heart conference in Manchester conducted additional tests on the patients in the hospital. Prof Colin Berry together with his team noticed that patients having signs of bleeding in the heart muscle were likely to cultivate complications later than patients who did not seem to have this damage.

According to Prof Berry, research director at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Clydebank, Scotland, this knowledge could eventually be helpful when doctors tend to decide what kind of treatment need to be given and how long the patients should be monitored closely. He doubts the bleeds could partly be affected by the blood thinning drugs which the doctors prescribe to the patients in treating a heart attack. Heart attack tends to occur when the leading blood vessels that supply the heart tends to get blocked by a clot.

Common Symptoms of Heart Attack

Prof Berry states that the tiny blood vessels that are in the heart muscle tissue could also seem to get blocked, making them leaky. He also informs that almost half of the heart attack patients possibly seem to have some bleeding or bruising of the heart, though not all would develop heart failure.

This could explain why the patients having effective treatment for their heart attack could also continue to have contrary results. He adds that they are now aware that heart muscle bleeding is an adverse complication which needs to be avoided.

His team have now been investigating if there could be an improved option of treating patients who tend to have a more severe attack, by injecting blood thinning or clot-busting drugs directly in the blood vessels of the heart instead of the intravenously, for instance. Though not the patients tend to experience the same symptoms and the common ones comprise of –

• Chest pain which feels like pressure or squeezing and can emit from the chest to the jaw, neck, arms and back 
• Shortness of breath 
• Feeling of weakness and/or lightheaded

Urgent medical help is essential if someone tends to have an attack where prompt treatment could save the life of the victim.