Although most heart attacks are caused by atherosclerosis, there are rarer cases in which heart attacks result from other medical conditions. These include congenital abnormalities of the coronary arteries, hypercoagulability (an abnormally increased tendency to form blood clots), a collagen vascular disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, or lupus), cocaine abuse, a spasm of the coronary artery, or an embolus (small traveling blood clot), which floats into a coronary artery and lodges there.
Symptoms
The most common symptom of a heart attack is chest pain, usually described as crushing, squeezing, pressing, heavy, or occasionally, stabbing or burning. Although this pain can occur at any time, a great number of patients experience it in the morning, within a few hours after awakening. Chest pain tends to be focused either in the center of the chest or just below the center of the rib cage, and it can spread to the arms, abdomen, neck, lower jaw or neck. Other symptoms can include sudden weakness, sweating, nausea, vomiting, breathlessness, loss of consciousness, palpitations or confusion. Sometimes, when a heart attack causes burning chest pain, nausea and vomiting, a patient may mistake his or her heart symptoms for indigestion.
