First Aid Treatment for a Heart Attack

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Chip and I'm a paramedic instructor in North Carolina. I'm here today to talk a little bit about how you can recognize and use some layperson type of treatment for someone having a heart attack. A heart attack being anything that's going to disrupt blood flow to your heart. Let us assume for a second that this person's alive, you know someone actually can die from a heart attack. Or you can have a heart attack and live from it; it goes two different ways depending how severe it is and what kind of treatment you receive. For identification of a heart attack it can be something as minor as a slight chest discomfort. Many people call that indigestion or maybe I just pulled a muscle. In the medical community it's chest discomfort is chest discomfort. You don't have to have true pain for that to be a heart attack. So if it's chest pressure, chest tingling, chest tightness, anything like that you should think chest pain or chest discomfort, possible heart attack and make sure you call nine-one-one immediately. Some other things that are associated with that are some pain that might go up the jaw. It could be a sharp stabbing or even a dull pain that maybe travels or is steady. It could go across to your left shoulder maybe to your left arm, rarely but it can happen, it can go to your right arm as well, as well as maybe some abdominal pain. And what that is is your heart allows center chest with about two-thirds the mass to the left and any wall or muscle of that heart can have a blood interruption. And the paid will be directly related to which muscle's affected. So you can have pain in different areas of the body. Associated with that will be weakness possibly. The patient may become pale.They may become slightly like a light blue or gray color which indicates some kind of oxygen problem. And when you see any of those things, or really if you back up to again and have any chest discomfort, nine-one-one should be called immediately and let them know and let them know that someone's having a possible heart attack. Let the EMS folks the EMTs and paramedics come and decide if they need to go to the hospital or not. Don't make that judgment call on your own. This is Chip and I hope we've helped you identify some ways to treat initial heart attacks and take care of someone having a heart attack."