Okay, it’s been a while since I last posted, but I have a question: Let’s say I have a heart attack, but it’s a mild one and I think it’s muscle pain in my arm - something like that. It’s my understanding that such things can happen.
What would happen if you gave blood two days after the heart attack?
I hope you’d consult with the cardiologist and the rest of your medical team before you even consider donating blood. They would be in a better position to answer the question.
Yes, definitely. To be clear, my OP is a hypothetical.
I think the OP’s point is that they are unaware they even had a heart attack. Then they unwittingly gave blood two days later. What would be the outcome?
I think the OP’s point is that they are unaware they even had a heart attack. Then they unwittingly gave blood two days later. What would be the outcome?
Yes, exactly.
You’d need to wait for one of our resident medics to give a factual answer.
But at the IANA medical expert IMHO level I suppose the blood donation wouldn’t be helpful but I doubt it would matter much.
The whole point of blood donations is they don’t take enough to leave you short enough to affect anything, assuming all else healthy. And a heart attack, and especially a mild one, need not leave your pumping very much impaired or even impaired at all. So you’ve still got a good enough pump and you’ve still got a good enough quantity of fluid.
I’m also kind of curious from the aspirin side of things - people take aspirin to thin the blood, right? Would a blood donation have a much greater effect?
As you can no doubt tell, I am definitely not a doctor.
Aspirin reduces platelet stickiness, which reduces clotting. Contrary to the phrase blood thinner, it doesn’t actually change the viscosity of your blood.
I’m sure this kind of thing has happened many, many times and nobody knew it, at least not until later.
FWIW, my grandmother had a diagnosed heart attack, and they told her at the hospital that she’d had another one a few days earlier. That time, she just thought she had pulled a muscle.
I had a mild heart attack and it almost wasn’t diagnosed - I was in the ER and they were about to discharge me when someone decided they should run a particular blood test again . It had been normal the first time, but the second time it showed damage to my heart. If they hadn’t run that second test, I never would have known.
True, but I could see reduced clotting being a potential issue with giving and/or using the blood.
Looking that up, I see that aspirin is not contraindicated when giving whole blood. But you must be off of it for 2 days before donating platelets.
I’m on Warfarin for AFib, and I’m not allowed to donate any more. Which is a shame because I discovered I had it when I was rejected for giving blood because of a shakyu pulse. At least I got 40 years of donations in.
I thought I might find some answers on the NHS blood donation web pages - there’s a huge FAQ on the theme ‘can I donate if…’, but all it says is ‘sorry, no you can’t’ for pretty much everything related to any heart conditions; it doesn’t go into detail.
However, that does indicate that they’ve risk-assessed it and have come to the conclusion there’s an increased likelihood of something undesirable; sometimes that’s about a direct risk to the patient’s health, sometimes it’s about managing a temporary risk that might occur at the point of donation (for obvious reasons, they don’t want to be managing a situation where a patient is unable to get up and walk away from the donation session).
I’m wondering what a heart attack changes in the blood, or was this just evidence of damaged heart muscle “decomposing”?
Not a medical person - but the way I understood it was that there is a particular chemical that is released into the bloodstream when the heart is damaged and apparently a certain level/trend (going up over a few hours) is used to diagnose a heart attack.
IANAD, but my understanding and also anecdotal experience is that there are a number of blood tests that measure levels of proteins, peptides, and cell-building susbstances called ceramides that are used as predictors of heart disease risk and also as biochemical markers for heart muscle damage. The most common of these cardiac markers is troponin T, a protein in the heart muscle whose levels are linked with damage to the heart muscle.
Back to the OP, again, IANAD, but I can say anecdotally that, depending on the cause, many mild or even non-symptomatic heart attacks are associated with elevated blood pressure before, during, and after the event. I presume blood pressure is taken at the blood clinic and the patient is rejected if it’s too high or too low. Also, post-treatment, I was on blood pressure medications that made me dizzy when I would first get up from a sitting position, until I got acclimatized to them. A patient in that condition should not be giving blood which would exacerbate the symptom, potentially making it unsafe for them to get up. And finally, a cardiac patient might be rejected solely on the basis of the medications they were taking.
When I had a heart attack, I was told not to donate blood ever. The doctor did not explain why.
So, this is anecdotal, but I talked to some doctors about this, last night. They seemed to think that while it wasn’t the best idea, if it were to have an effect, it would be immediate - but it probably wouldn’t do anything either way.
IAAD (pathologist to be specific) but it’s been quite a while since I did my short stint on blood bank training during residency, so my knowledge is undoubtedly not 100% current. That said, off the top of my head I can’t see a reason why in theory it’d be a problem for someone who recently had a mild heart attack to donate blood. Looked at from both sides: Would there be a problem with the blood? I don’t think so. While it’s true what was said upthread about troponin and other biomarkers for heart damage, transfusing those into another person would be inconsequential. Would it harm the donor? I don’t see why it would. Heck, it might even help them slightly by lowering their blood pressure a tiny bit and reducing the number of circulating platelets. Be that as it may, blood bankers are known to be a very, very, very risk averse bunch. “Belts and suspenders” was an oft repeated slogan around the lab ( And what they don’t say is they are also wearing 3 pairs of pants!) So I could see it being just a blanket No if there’s any whisp of something amiss about a donor, especially as it relates to cardiovascular health and it hasn’t been thoroughly vetted for safety. God forbid, if anything went south while or just after someone donated, there’d be a crap ton of documentation to do and looking into it and so forth, even if there’s no obvious connection between donating and what happened. Nobody want that. Plus, they would not want that to stain the blood donating process in the public. Wouldn’t be prudent. So best to just say no. That’s what I think. I may be wrong.
One thing to keep in mind is almost all blood donated these days is separated into different components- packed red cells for oxygen carrying capacity, fresh frozen plasma for clotting factors and some other reasons, and cryprecipitate for more specialized clotting factors. That’s why if you’re on warfarin they don’t want your blood anymore. The packed red cella’s be just fine, but the clotting factors would be depleted.
Interesting and thank you Oly - this might be apparent from your post, but I wanted to ask anyway. Let’s say someone has a heart attack, donates blood, the blood bank accepts it. Yes, this has a very slim chance of happening.
The person who receives the blood then gets his blood drawn - would the doctors think that the person had a heart attack? IF SO, how long would that effect be in circulation? I would think that several months after the fact, that all the heart attack signs would be gone from the blood, but the day after receiving the blood?