MEDICAL JARGON BUSTER

SCIENTIFIC terms decoded. This week: Cardiac arrest vs heart attack ‘CARDIAC’ comes from the Greek word kardiakos, meaning ‘pertaining to the heart’. ‘Cardiac arrest’ was first used as a medical term in the 1950s. It is sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably with the phrase ‘heart attack’.

Cardiac arrest is when the heart stops pumping (it may quiver or flutter instead) due to an electrical malfunction. It can be triggered by a heart condition, choking, electric shocks, or losing a lot of blood. If the heart cannot pump blood in a normal way, then the body is starved of oxygen and this can result in a loss of consciousness and even death if not treated quickly. A heart attack, meanwhile, is where cardiac tissue dies due to a lack of oxygenrich blood. This can be due to narrowed arteries and a clot. The signs of a heart attack can be immediate, but more commonly it is a slow onset of symptoms persisting from hours to days: chest pain, light-headedness and shortness of breath are all warning signs. This can lead to cardiac arrest, but not always.