What is Myocardial Infarction & its types? - Dr. Mohan Kumar HN
Myocardial infarction is a life threatening cardiac emergency, wherein one of the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart muscle is blocked because of the blood clot. Heart receives its blood supply from blood vessels or the coronary arteries. There are 3 coronary arteries in majority of the patients. One right side and 2 left side, the left anterior descending artery and the left circumflex artery. If there is some occlusion of the vessels which supplies blood to the inferior portion of the heart, then we call it as inferior wall myocardial infarction. In patients with myocardial infarction, we classify it into 2 types, one whether it is in non ST elevation MI or ST elevation MI based on the ECG finding. In the ST elevation MI, there is ST segment elevation of more than 1 to 2 mm in two consecutive leads and in non ST elevation MI, ST elevation won’t be there. In both these patients there will be a damage to the heart muscle because of the deceased blood supply to some portion of the heart muscle. So when there is a deceased blood supply to some portion of the heart muscle, this muscle will get damaged and the muscle protein is release d into the blood, what we call as troponin or CPK-MB. Proteins are not seen in the blood. If these proteins are seen in the blood, then we consider it as a myocardial infarction. Depending on the ECG finding we can classify it as an ST elevation or non ST elevation myocardial infarction.
