A heart attack and a cardiac arrest, though usually confused by most of us, are in fact two different things.12 A heart attack occurs when oxygenated blood can’t get to heart muscle because of a blockage in a coronary artery. Heart attacks are often sudden – that’s why they are called attacks – whereas other forms of heart failure often (though not always) are more gradual. When heart muscle downstream of a blockage is deprived of oxygen, it begins to die, usually within about sixty minutes. Any heart muscle we lose in this way is gone for ever, which is a bit galling when you consider that
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