What is the difference between heart failure, heart attack, and cardiac arrest?
Many lay people confuse the three terms – they are quite different. • Heart attack – this consists of death of heart muscle due to an occlusion (blockage) of a coronary artery. Put simply, heart muscle tissue dies. The heart muscle dies because it is starved of oxygen (because blood is not getting to it). • Heart failure – this means the heart muscle cannot pump blood around the body effectively/properly. It is not a heart attack. • Cardiac arrest – this means the heartbeat stops, the heart stops, blood circulation stops, there is no pulse. Put simply – a heart attack means heart cells die due to lack of oxygen, heart failure means the heart does not pump blood properly, and cardiac arrest means the heart stops.
