RIP Dick Clark

[Spud]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120418/D9U7IP982.html

Always in the top ten in my book.

[roymond]

He had an amazing run.

But when announcing someone has had a fatal heart attack, does size matter?

[Spud]

I have been sitting here trying to parse your joke for several minutes, and I have not succeeded. Is this a reference to the "massive fatal heart attack" I saw in some media? Or is it a dick joke? Or something else entirely that I am missing...

[roymond]

Actually didn't mean it as a joke. Many headlines I saw were "dies of massive heart attack", and rather than convey his passing, it made me visualize what a massive heart attack looks like. Since articles didn't offer any clarification I felt it was inappropriate or at least unnecessary.

[Niveous]

I found this in yahoo answers and I think this is a pretty good explanation of the whole heart attack v. massive heart attack thing:

A heart attack is a process where an artery feeding the heart muscle with oxygenated blood becomes blocked or is obstructed, to the point where "infarction" occurs. Infarction is deprivation of oxygen causing cell death.

Differentiating a "massive" heart attack verses a regular heart attack does not have any specific medical criteria. Usually we talk about a massive heart attack in terms of the end outcome..."he had a massive heart attack and died" or "he had a massive heart attack, he's in intensive care and its touch and go." Now, why would one type of heart attack be minor and another be massive?

Ateries are like trees. Large ones feed smaller branches, etc. So a massive heart attack has to do how far upstream the artery is blocked, what the blocked artery feeds, the extent of the blockage, and amount of time it took before reprofusion was accomplished. There are very large arteries that are the main arteries feeding others - Left Main and Left Anterior Descending, for instance. The left side of the heart is the largest and the one responsible for pumping blood through the body. So any artery feeding the left side heart function is critical.

If its one of the two arteries mentioned above and its a complete blockage then death or mortal injury is very likely unless you are surrounded by medical people when it happens.

On the other hand if a small artery is 85% blocked downstream and feeds the right side of the heart; then by blood test or EKG the person has had a heart attack, but might have walked around with it for days.

As you can see these are very different events - both heart attacks - one massive and one minor.

[roymond]

Thanks, Niv. I went through a bunch of this when my dad had a heart attack and subsequent triple bypass, and I spent two weeks in the hospital with him consulting with his doctors throughout. But "massive" was never a term they kicked around, nor was it in the literature. But anyway, even with this definition, I don't see the editorial necessity to say "died of a massive heart attack" vs "died of a heart attack", other than the usual media emphasis on bigger-is-better. But I sense I am over thinking this

[Caravan Ray]

Massive overthink

...though, it should be noted that 'massive' really means 'bulky- - ie 'having a lot of mass'. So as a heart attack descriptor, 'massive' is probably not really the right word (unless you were actually describing the blockage - but we are not, we are describing the impact and consequence of a blockage).

"Major" or "severe" would be a better adjectives to use.

[Spud]

I agree with the roymond. The fact that he died conveys sufficient information about the severity of the heart attack in question.

[hillbilly]

My dad had massive heart attack while driving ( puked, thru up, shit in his pants and wrecked the truck) it killed 45% of his heart. Your body expells itself of all fluids at one time. Didnt last to much longer after that.