Nothing gets our blood pumping like using the dictionary and thesaurus to find cool new words. (Such excitement!) But we’ve got to keep those beats under control, as we’re about to share a medical term you may want to know.
If you’re the kind of person who must keep a finger on the pulse of fancy medical jargon, then take a look below!
What is the medical term for heart attack?
In medicine, the technical term for a heart attack is myocardial infarction. The term myocardial infarction is commonly used in medical texts, articles, and reports. If a text is to be read by an audience unfamiliar with technical terms, the phrase heart attack is most commonly used instead of myocardial infarction.
Healthcare professionals use medical terms like myocardial infarction to provide universal medical care and standardize communication within the medical field.
Why is a heart attack called a myocardial infarction?
The word myocardial brings together the combining form myo– (“muscle”) and cardial (“of or relating to the heart”). The noun infarction refers to an area of tissue that is dead or dying due to an obstruction of circulation. Putting it all together, a myocardial infarction is damage to heart muscle caused by a lack of oxygen. Typically, heart attacks occur when blood flow to the heart muscle is blocked or obstructed. It should go without saying that having your heart muscle die is an incredibly serious concern, and heart attacks often lead to severe medical issues and death.
The terms myocardial and infarction aren’t only used to refer to heart attacks.
The term myocardial is used in other medical terms that refer to heart muscle. These terms might include:
- myocardial ischemia (a lack of blood flow to heart muscles)
- myocardial fibrosis (scarring in heart muscle tissue)
The term infarction is used in other medical terms that refer to dead tissue resulting from lack of oxygen. Some examples include:
- cerebral infarction (brain tissue death)
- pulmonary infarction (lung tissue death)
- splenic infarction (spleen tissue death)
Synonyms of heart attack
A heart attack refers to a specific type of medical issue affecting the heart. Myocardial infarction is the only other term that means the exact same thing as heart attack. If you are looking for other terms that refer to heart issues, you could use:
Examples of non-medical synonyms of heart attack
If you instead want to talk about someone having a figurative heart attack, you have a lot more options. If you need a verb or adjective, you could consider some of these words:
