DIAGNOSIS

Ideally, your doctor should screen you during regular physical exams for risk factors that can lead to a heart attack.

If you're in an emergency setting for symptoms of a heart attack, you'll be asked about your symptoms and have your blood pressure, pulse and temperature checked. You'll be hooked up to a heart monitor and have tests to see if you're having a heart attack.

Test include:

 • Electrocardiogram (ECG): This first test done to diagnose a heart attack records the electric activity of your heart via electrodes attached to your skin. Impulses are recorded as waves displayed on a monitor or printed on paper. Because injured heart muscle doesn't conduct electrical impulses normally, the ECG may show that a heart attack has occured or is in progress.
       
           
• Blood tests: Certain heart proteins slowly leak into your blood after heart damage from a heart attack. Emergency room doctors will take samples of your blood to test for the presence of these enzymes.           


• Additional tests:
 If you've had or are having a heart attack, doctors will take immediate steps to treat your condition. You might also have these additional tests.

• Chest X-ray: An X-ray image of your chest allows your doctor to check the size of your heart and it's blood vessels and to look for fluid in your lungs.



• Coronary catheterization (angiogram): A liquid dye is injected into the arteries of your heart through a long, thin tube (catheter) that's fed through an artery, usually in your leg or groin, to the arteries in your heart. The dye makes the arteries visible on X-ray, revealing areas of blockage.


• Exercise stress test: In the days or weeks after your heart attack, you might also have a stress test to measure how your heart and blood vessels respond to exertion. You might walk on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike while attached to an ECG machine. Or you might receive a drug intravenously that stimulates your heart similar to the way exercise does.



• Cardiac CT or MRI: These tests can be used to diagnose heart problems, including the extent of damage from heart attacks. In a cardiac CT scan, you lie on a table inside a doughnut-shaped machine. An X-ray tube inside the machine rotates around your body and collects images of your heart and chest.
In a cardiac MRI, you lie on a table inside a long tube like machine that produces a magnetic field. The magnetic field aligns atomic particles in some of your cells. When radio waves are broadcast toward these aligned particles, they produce signals that vary according to the type of tissue they are. The signals create image of your heart.




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