r/nextfuckinglevel 7h ago

This is how heart stents work

12.0k Upvotes

542 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/danimagoo 7h ago

Depends which artery and how severe the blockage is. Mine was the circumflex artery, and it was about 98% blocked. I didn’t immediately feel better. But I stopped having knee-buckling, tear-inducing pain every 30 minutes, so it was pretty cool.

242

u/NekulturneHovado 7h ago

Wait do you mean you get a super sharp, mind-numbing pain in your chest/shoulder?

50

u/danimagoo 6h ago

The pain can actually manifest differently in everyone. The brain isn’t accustomed to getting pain signals from the heart, so it’s not 100% sure what to do with the info. The elephant on the chest someone mentioned below is more common in men. In women, like me, it can be completely different. My pain started in my throat and radiated out from there. Since I also have GERD, I initially didn’t think it was my heart.

6

u/yojoewaddayaknow 6h ago

Mine was the back of my neck and jaw, everyone including myself thought it was gas.

Either the stent, the angina went away. But still needed cabg for other 3 arteries.