Aspirin: Heart-attack first aid

If you think you are hav­ing a heart attack, tak­ing an aspirin at the first sign of symp­toms may save your life.

As soon as a call comes into our 911 cen­ter, our dis­patch­ers are trained to rec­om­mend tak­ing one adult-strength aspirin (325 mil­ligrams) or four “baby” aspirin (81 mil­ligrams) after they run through a check­list that con­firms your symp­toms and rules out con­traindi­ca­tions such as aller­gies to aspirin ther­apy. Our first respon­ders also carry aspirin among their emer­gency med­i­cines and supplies.

Aspirin is an anti­co­ag­u­lant that makes the clot caus­ing your heart attack smaller, help­ing to main­tain blood flow through the nar­rowed artery.

With­out blood and oxy­gen, heart tis­sue dete­ri­o­rates and dies. Quick restora­tion of cir­cu­la­tion is the surest way to pre­vent heart dam­age. Every sec­ond counts. More dam­age is done the longer blood flow is impeded. That’s why we rec­om­mend chew­ing your aspirin to speed digestion.

Stud­ies have shown that aspirin reduces the risk of death by approx­i­mately 23 per­cent. While other med­ica­tion ther­a­pies have come and gone, aspirin has been shown to save lives for more than two decades.

Com­mon heart attack symp­toms include chest pain and/or pres­sure, pain ema­nat­ing from the chest to other areas of the body, short­ness of breath, sense of impend­ing doom, sweat­ing, faint­ing and nau­sea. Addi­tional or dif­fer­ent symp­toms for women may include abdom­i­nal pain or heart­burn, clammy skin, light­head­ed­ness or dizzi­ness and unex­plained fatigue.

Many peo­ple con­fuse aspirin (Bayer, Bufferin) with com­mon, over-the-counter pain reliev­ers such as ibupro­fen (Advil, Motrin), naproxen (Aleve) and aceta­minophen (Tylenol), but aspirin is the only one that plays a role in the pre­ven­tion and treat­ment of heart dis­ease. Always look for aspirin as the active ingredient.

Any­one who is at risk for stroke or heart attack should have aspirin safely stored in the house. Chil­dren under the age of 17 with flu-like ill­ness should never be given aspirin, because of the con­cern about Reyes Syn­drome, a poten­tially deadly dis­ease affect­ing the brain and liver.

Even though it is widely avail­able with­out a pre­scrip­tion, aspirin is a drug with the poten­tial for toxic over­doses and side effects such as gas­troin­testi­nal bleed­ing and drug inter­fer­ence. In some cases, risks may out­weigh pro­tec­tive ben­e­fits. Peo­ple should not engage in any type of aspirin ther­apy unless directed by a physician.

In the event of car­diac arrest, chest com­pres­sion CPR is another inter­ven­tion that can be started imme­di­ately at the scene to improve the chance of sur­vival until EMS arrives. Research has shown that chest com­pres­sion CPR saves more lives than tra­di­tional CPR with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Grady is an accred­ited Chest Pain Cen­ter that works closely with city and county EMS to ensure rapid response and advanced inter­ven­tion. Our squads make nearly 10,000 runs a year. Trans­mis­sion of EKG results from the field enables our emer­gency depart­ment physi­cians to diag­nose heart attacks and pre­pare appro­pri­ate treat­ment before the patient arrives at the hos­pi­tal. Should patients require crit­i­cal care trans­port to Grant Med­ical Cen­ter or River­side Methodist Hos­pi­tal in Colum­bus, we have a pro­to­col in place that meets and often beats the national gold stan­dard for speed of care.

Khanh Thai, MD, is an Emer­gency Room physi­cian at Grady Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal and med­ical direc­tor of the Delaware County and Delaware City EMS.

Posted by Grady Memorial Hospital on Oct 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.