Talk:Myocardial infarction

evolutionary considerations

I believe there should be some mention in the article about the lack of an evolved cognisance of a heart attack. It would be impossible for a "sense" of a heart attack to evolve because that sense would not influence the survival of the carrier. Imagine a mutant individual who was aware they were experiencing a myocardial infarction. This individual would not benefit from this information because he cannot influence the odds of his own survival by averting the heart attack in some way. Such a sensor in the body would not get itself propagated into subsequent generations because the carrier of the sensor would not live longer or leave more children just because he can sense heart attacks. Any sensations that we can attribute to a heart attack is purely incidental to the side effects, such as numbness in the fingers due to the lack of blood flow.

This addition would be useful because #1) it raises awareness of the importance of evolutionary considerations in medicine #2) it is a truthful statement about the nature of our awareness of our heart and the nervous system that has evolved between our heart and brain #3) it fights the implication that we have nerves connected to our heart so that we can "feel" our heart. if this were true why then don't we have nerves to every other organ so we can be aware of their malfunctioning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.77.95.90 (talk) 23:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Nothing the body could do would have any good effect in the course of the heartattack or in the harm to the body? --TiagoTiago (talk) 06:44, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Treatment?

Looking at the contents of this article, I'm curious why there is no section titled "Treatment". To me "treatment" is "short-term" and "management" is "longer-term". But those are only my perceptions.

From a medical POV, what is the distinction between "treatment" and "management"? Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 17:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I feel these can generally be used interchangeably, although the idea of treatment being short term and management being long term does 'feel' right. I think the heading of management seems okay. Tannim101 (talk) 18:19, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Symptoms.

"Classical symptoms of acute myocardial infarction include sudden chest pain (typically radiating to the left arm or left side of the neck), shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, palpitations, sweating, and anxiety (often described as a sense of impending doom)." This is a terrible sentence. It justs lists a set of things that are in so many conditions -- like, almost all of them -- so as to be useless. If anyone knows the more dramatic, more obvous symptoms of this (nail or mouth color change for instance) they would be far more useful. Currently, its the type of sentence that terrifies already paniced people, so I think we should make absolutely clear the most dangerous signs, not all of them. 74.128.56.194 (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I do know what you mean, however that is a pretty chassic explaination of the symptoms of MI. When you talk about nail or mouth colour change, this would be a sign, not a symptom. Tannim101 (talk) 18:17, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Common name

So why doesn't WP:COMMONNAME apply to this article? 99.99% of people wouldn't known what a myocardial infarction is but they sure have heard of heart attacks. The article cancer isn't named malignant neoplasm. Most Wikipedia readers aren't medical professionals or students. S_peakF_ree ^(talk) 18:54, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:33, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Myocardial infarction → heart attack – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC) The proposed name is the common name, end of story. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. I was about to fully agree with you, Ohconfucius, until I had a quick look at google scholar. I get 1.41 million hits for "Myocardial infarction", compared with 207,000 for "heart attack". Seems that myocardial infarction actually is the common name in scholarly sources. Jenks24 (talk) 06:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Heart attack is used non technically to mean a number of things including cardiac arrest due to none coronary artery causes. Thus these two terms are NOT synonymous.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I notice that heart attack is linked from the intro to cardiac arrest, but not vice versa - this would help people be clear on the difference. 81.142.107.230 (talk) 12:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Heart attack could be created as a disambiguation page linking to both here and cardiac arrest. --WS (talk) 13:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. It's no surprise that Google Scholar prefers myocardial infarction; medical literature always prefers the more complex and more precise forms of words. I don't think we want to go down the route of titling our articles the way a medical encyclopedia would -- especially articles on common subjects such as this one. From reading cardiac arrest, the use of "heart attack" to refer to that condition is rarer and erroneous; rather, it most often refers to the subject of this article, so the redirect is appropriate. And it's clearly the common name for the incident. Powers ^T 23:26, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I do not have a problem with redirecting heart attack here just do not suggest we move this page their.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Because "heart attack" can have multiple meanings, it would be inappropriate to move this page there. A disambig page for "heart attack" seems appropriate. Yobol (talk) 05:51, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
  • What multiple meanings? "Heart attack" only rarely refers to cardiac arrest, and even less rarely to cardiac arrest not resulting from myocardial infarction. That the term is occasionally misapplied by laymen is no reason to avoid using the term in our article's title. Powers ^T 14:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
    • That it is misapplied seems to bolster the need for a disasmbiguation page, don't you think? Yobol (talk) 19:14, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose This article is about myocardial infarctions, not all forms of cardiac arrest. IMHO in common usage "heart attack" refers to all forms of cardiac arrest. Anyone who knows that this is technically incorrect will know that the more proper term for heart attack is myocardial infarction. The redirect from "heart attack" with the hat note referring to the "cardiac arrest" disambiguation page is therefore appropriate.--Wikimedes (talk) 19:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Myocardial infarction is simply the correct term for what is being described in the article. Meanwhile, one might use the term "heart attack" to also describe the syndrome resulting from a severe arrhythmia caused by, say, electrocution.--Rossd (talk) 10:23, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.