About the disease
Angina pectoris is a decreased blood flow to the heart, which results in chest pain. Pain appears because of insufficient oxygen supply to the heart. Pain can worsen if person experiences physical or emotional stress.
There are two types of angina:
Stable angina is predictable and usually a person knows what can trigger chest pain and thus he has partial control over it.
Unstable angina is a more dangerous condition, when pain appears suddenly, even if a person was calm and did not do any exercises. Without treatment it can result in heart attack.
Symptoms
- Pain and discomfort in chest
- Dizziness
- Nausea
- Headache
- Burning in chest
- Discomfort in jaw, neck, and back
Very often people who have angina take excessive amount of nitroglycerin pills to alleviate the pain. If it does not go away after 15 minutes, it can be a heart attack a person needs to get immediate medical help. Heart attack happens because of coronary artery blockage.
Usually angina pectoris is caused by coronary artery disease which hampers the blood flow. According to statistics, approximately 18% of coronary disease attacks are accompanied by angina. This disease is more common in men. Women have angina 70% more often than men.
Diagnosis
- Electrocardiogram monitors electrical activity of heart and its deviations from standard.
- Coronary angiography is in most cases used to evaluate the extent and severity of carotid artery stenosis and angina.
- Stress and exercise test is used to see how heart reacts to changes in physical and emotional activity of the patient.
- Chest radiography will help to exclude concomitant conditions, which can cause pain in the chest as well. It uses ionizing radiation to get images.
Treatment
- Сardiac catheterization with stent placement is a surgery, during which a doctor inserts tube into blood vessel, reaches coronary artery and places special stent to widen this artery. The procedure is done to prevent narrowing and insufficient blood supply of the heart in future.
- Сardiac catheterization and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) are recommended in more severe cases. The technique also uses catheter to reach the heart. After that doctor takes healthy artery or graft vein and attaches it to damaged artery, so that blood flow can surpass it. CABG creates the bypass during open-heart surgery under general anesthesia. Doctors usually use saphenous leg vein to attach to the damaged artery. This procedure can be performed during on and off pump heart surgery.
Overall, all these types of treatment are highly effective and can prevent heart attack in future if you are under risk or prevent new heart attack if you already had one.
Authors: Dr. Nadezhda Ivanisova, Dr. Sergey Pashchenko
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