With heart disease a virtual epidemic in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants to improve the nation's health by seeing to it that the public better informed about its most dire symptom: a heart attack.
Also called a myocardial infarction, a heart attack occurs when a section of the heart muscle dies or gets damaged because of reduced blood supply. According to the CDC, coronary artery disease (CAD) occurs when a substance called plaque builds up in the arteries that supply blood to the heart (called coronary arteries). CAD is the main cause of heart attack. The five major symptoms of a heart attack are—