What are the signs/precursors of cardiac arrest?

A cardiac arrest is often preceded by a longstanding heart disease. This includes diseases such as coronary heart disease, cardiac insufficiency or cardiac arrhythmia. However, cardiac arrest often occurs without warning.

The direct signs of cardiac arrest are that the person affected suddenly becomes unconscious. They usually collapse and then react neither to response nor to pain stimuli. Since the heart no longer beats, no pulse can be felt.

Breathing stops after two minutes. Signs of cardiac arrest can occur at intervals of a few minutes to even hours before the heart stops. These include angina pectoris symptoms (pain and pressure/feeling of tightness in the chest) as well as shortness of breath and sudden tiredness or weakness.

Fainting spells or dizziness can also be harbingers of cardiac arrest. These symptoms often occur during physical exertion. The strain requires a significantly higher performance of the heart and can therefore cause cardiac arrest.

What are the risk factors for cardiac arrest?

Sudden cardiac arrest has many cardiac risk factors (coming from the heart). These include all types of heart disease: from previous heart attacks and cardiovascular arrests, through cardiac insufficiency and cardiac arrhythmia, to coronary heart disease and arteriosclerosis. All these diseases lead to a reduced performance capacity of the heart and thus promote cardiac arrest.

Among the risk factors are also diseases that favor the development of heart disease. These include metabolic diseases such as diabetes mellitus (diabetes) and hyperlipidemia (increase in cholesterol=blood fat values). High blood pressure is also a risk factor for cardiac arrest.

In addition, smoking, increased alcohol consumption and an unhealthy lifestyle (little exercise, unbalanced high-fat diet) favour the development of heart disease and thus the occurrence of cardiac arrest. Young people can also be affected by sudden cardiac arrest. Most often, this occurs in the context of a heart muscle inflammation, as this disease weakens the heart acutely very much. Especially when the inflammation remains undetected and the person affected does sports, the heart is overloaded and reacts with a cardiac arrest.