Question

A TV reporter has been assigned to your ambulance for a ride-along. He is doing a segment on the local EMS system for EMS Week. In your down time, the reporter tells you that his wife was diagnosed with atherosclerosis. He is unsure what this condition is and asks you to explain it to him. What is your response?

Answer 1

Answer:

"The walls of the coronary arteries lose elasticity, which can lead to a heart attack."

Explanation:

Atherosclerosis causes a profound alteration in basically all arteries: in the ones that go to the heart and brain, the carotids, in the aorta, this large artery that distributes blood to the whole body, and in the arteries of the lower limbs. It is, therefore, a systemic disease that produces huge changes in its evolution related to decreased blood flow in certain organs. To talk about this disease briefly and clearly, it can be said that with atherosclerosis the walls of the coronary arteries lose elasticity, which can lead to a heart attack.

What happens in atherosclerosis is that under various stimuli, including smoke, the artery changes and reacts. It multiplies its cells, receives the deposit of circulating substances, for example, the fatty ones and undergoes a calcification process that promotes its hardening and loss of elasticity, offering a high risk of infarction.