Hypoxia and Medicine

What is the difference between Cardiac Ischemia and Coronary Heart disease?

I'm a little confused. But, isn't ischemian caused by atherosclerosis? When the arteries are narrow they may cause reduced O2 in heart tissue??

Public Comments

1. cardiac ischemia is reduced oxygen to the heart muscle, after 20 minutes ischemia can lead to infarct or death of the muscle. CAD or coronary artery disease is atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries or progressive narrowing caused by plaques in the vessel wall. Hope that helps
2. Your right to a certain degree. atherosclerosis is a complex process which actually begins in the early twentys. But do you have cardiac ischaemia at this point? No. Athersclerosis develops in plaques through the continual insult of cholesterol and fat to vessels. However it is only when this plaque becomes classified as a stage 4 plaque that clinical symptoms become apparent. That is because the plaque is now of such a size that it is reducing oxygen delivery to the heart, but this is usally, to begin with, only with exercise. Such a diagnosis is referred to as stable angina for which people may be prescribed drugs such as GTN to dilate the arteries. Should the insult continue and the plaque become bigger, the reduction in oxygen to the heart, and asociated symptoms (of chest pain primarily) are not so easy to predict. It essentially relates to the plaque and the fact it is not stable and could break off at any point causing a downstream occlusion of the artery. At this point you are at real risk of a heart attack and indeed should the plaque rupture and cause an occlusion downstream of the plaque and thereby inhibiting oxygen delivery to the part of the heart supplied by that artery, it will die. This is what happens in a heart attack (or myocardial infarction). The size of the heart attack is dependant on how far upstream the blockage is and therefore how many cardiac cells have been affected. The trouble with cardiac cells is that they are a fixed population of cells i.e. have no ability to regenerate. Therefore with multiple heart attacks you gradually lose cardiac myocytes (cardiac muscle cells).
3. if you go on google and type in (ANYTHING ON HEART DESEASE) it will tell you everything you want to know. good luck
4. Heart disease is an ongoing process, of narrowing of blood vessels in the heart. Cardiac Ischemia refers to an event causing a complete blockage of a large or small artery of the heart, that will result in tissue death if not corrected by drugs like nitroglycerin, angioplasty, or bypass surgery. Blockage in a major artery threatens about 40% of the heart. A minor blockage can threaten less than 1-5 % or more. I've had bypass surgery once, angioplasty twice, and used nitro a few dozen times at home, and a few times while in the hospital.