The Difference Between Cardiac Arrest and Heart Attack Is this Statement True?

[Angela.Tris24]

Explaining Cardiac Arrest and Heart Attacks. Once a Person is in Cardiac Arrest are you Clinically dead?

The heart is not shocked back into rhythm. It is shocked to a standstill in the midst of disorganised electrical activity, in the hopes of the heart picking up its natural rhythm again. That is why, in real life, there is no point in shocking a patient in flatline. Someone in cardiac arrest is already "dead". Also, the person will absolutely collapse, lose consciousness and stop breathing. A heart attack is decreased blood to a part of the heart muscle that then causes "death" of part of the heart tissue. A reduction in blood flow to a part of the heart does not necessarily mean the person will have a heart attack.

[mama_d, BSN, RN]

I was watching a rerun of Cold Case the other night. It was the one about the doctor that gets caught up in gambling and ends up being shot (I won't give away whodunit in case you haven't seen it). Anyway, the doc is an ED doc, and there's a patient on a stretcher with a cardiac monitor attached to him. The patient is in asystole, so the doc grabs some paddles and shocks the guy back into NSR. Sigh.

Oh, this irritates the snot out of me. Mostly b/c lay people see things like that and get the impression that defib is always an alternative. If there's not a rhythm there to shock, you can pump as much electric into the heart as you want and nothing is going to happen.

I've even had POAs say "I don't want him shocked unless he's flatlined." Which makes me