Dallas County Living Well Magazine Winter 2014 | Page 15

A COUGH COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE
COURTESY PRESBYTERIAN HEART & VASCULAR GROUP
Which of the following could be a
sign of a heart attack: neck pain,
chest pain or back pain? If you answered, “All three”, you get a gold
star.
Although the most common sign of
sudden cardiac arrest is chest pain
or discomfort, it’s not always one
of the symptoms. Other symptoms
might include shortness of breath,
nausea, sweating, dizziness, blurred
vision, sudden weakness, trembling
hands and/or pain or discomfort
in other parts of the upper body.
These symptoms can occur singly
or in combination; or, there may be
no symptoms at all.
Now that you know what to look
for with a possible heart attack,
the question then becomes: What
should you do if you think you are
having a heart attack?

ACTIONS THAT MAY HELP

If you are feeling pain in your chest
and there is no one around to administer life-saving resuscitation,
remember to cough. It could save
your life.
The American Heart Association
concurs that during a sudden arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm
event that can sometimes lead to
or be a result of a heart attack), it
may be possible for a conscious,
responsive person to cough forcefully and repetitively to maintain
enough blood flow to the brain to
remain alert until help can arrive.
Blood flow is maintained by increased pressure in the chest that
occurs during the forceful coughing.
At Presbyterian Heart & Vascular
Group, our physicians have practiced this measure in the cardiac
catheterization lab in appropriate
situations where the patient is conscious and constantly monitored.
Sometimes, patients have cardiac
arrest symptoms while undergoing
angiography — a dye test used
to diagnose blocked heart arteries. When this happens, we may
instruct the patient to cough every
one to three seconds during the initial seconds of the event or until the

event passes; however, this is not
an effective treatment for all patients and does not take the place
of definitive treatment.
If coughing isn’t appropriate or
isn’t relieving your symptoms, here
are a few other recommendations
that may act as a chain of survival
for you o ȁ