When a person experiences severe pain in the middle of the chest, several tests may be done to determine whether or not the pain is due to a heart attack.

Heart attacks generally result from the condition called coronary heart disease or CHD (C-H-D). Therefore, both primary and secondary risk factors that promote CHD may also increase the risk of a heart attack.

Controlling heart attack risk factors may successfully prevent heart attacks from occurring in the first place. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that such measures may prevent additional episodes of heart attack when previous heart attacks are known to have occurred.

Heart attack recovery generally includes two phases: hospital-based diagnostic and restorative procedures, followed by outpatient rehabilitation and at-home lifestyle adjustments.

Most heart attacks are accompanied by a set of common symptoms. These may include all or some of the following: moderate to severe mid-chest pain lasting more than several minutes; pain that radiates to the back, jaw, shoulder, and left arm; dizziness and nausea; heavy thumping of the heart; irregular heart beats; shortness of breath; restlessness; and profuse sweating.

When the heart muscle does not receive adequate blood supply, the muscle cells become injured and cannot function properly. When the injury causes the heart to stop beating temporarily, it's called cardiac arrest, heart attack, or myocardial infarction (my-oh-CARD-ee-uhl in-FARK-shun).