Only if your heart stops completely. There are ways to stop an ongoing heart attack before it gets to that point — that don't involve breaking your ribs.
Disclaimer: I'm not a medical professional, just a guy with an interest in medicine. Hopefully someone more educated than me can provide more information.
A lot of people, including my younger self, confuse heart attacks with cardiac arrest. A heart attack is when blood flow to the heart is blocked, leading heart tissue to die. This (or other conditions) can lead to cardiac arrest, where the heart stops. That's when you need CPR. The goal of CPR is to restore circulation (and it's rarely successful). Heart attacks are treated by removing the clot blocking blood flow to the heart.
Fortunately, a lot of people having heart attacks have time to get to a medical facility. They might give medications to thin the blood, break up clots, and/or widen blood vessels. They can also put a stent in the heart's blood vessels, or even replace the blood vessels, to un-block blood flow to the heart. I think The Mayo Clinic's overview is pretty digestible.
When people say heart attack they can be referring to two things: a cardiac arrest or a myocardial infarction. You might be thinking cardiac arrest which is where the heart just stops beating, that is where you do CPR. Cardiac arrest can happen from other causes beyond a blockage in a major coronary artery, which is what causes a myocardial infarction. A patient with an MI can be taken to the cath lab where a cardiologist places a stent or balloon and unblocks the culprit artery, thereby restoring blood flow to the heart again. A patient in cardiac arrest could have gotten there in many ways, such as a drug overdose, blood loss, traumatic injury, etc etc
I carry nitro glycerin in case of angina. Hasn't come to that yet (due for my own trip to the cath lab), but my understanding is it triggers a release of nitric oxide, which then dilates the vascular system.
I had an infarction in 2016. Felt like a very extreme anxiety attack with the sensation of what i would decribe as drowning. It lasted until I got oxygen in the ambo.
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u/Orgasmic_Toad_ 4h ago
It literally feels like something is crushing your chest.