Sudden Cardiac Arrest »
Introduction to sudden cardiac arrest
A natural disaster hits, the power goes off and the lights go out. It's a
common scene that plays out during hurricane and tornado seasons, and it's very
similar in trying to explain sudden cardiac arrest. The heart sustains an insult,
the electricity is short circuited, the heart can't pump, and the body dies.
The heart is an electrical pump, where the electricity is generated in
special pacemaker cells in the upper chamber, or atrium, of the heart. This
electrical spark is carried through pathways in the heart so that all the muscle
cells contract at once and produce a heart beat. This pumps blood through the
heart valves and into all the organs of the body so that they can do their work.
This mechanism can break down in a variety of ways, but the final pathway in
sudden death is the same: the electrical system is irritated and fails to
produce electrical activity that causes the heart to beat. The h...
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