You may be given supplemental oxygen through the nose or mouth. This is necessary during a heart attack to deliver needed oxygen to the body. At times the EKG appears normal even when a heart attack is occurring. Changes on the EKG may not be apparent for several days. For this reason, the physician may recommend admission to the hospital for continued observation.
Blood tests can provide important information about heart muscle damage during a heart attack.
A special form of CPK, which is found only in heart tissue, can be measured. Another chemical, which is becoming more widely used to diagnosis a heart attack is troponin T, also found only in cardiac muscle cells. These blood tests will usually be repeated every eight hours for the first day or two following a heart attack. They provide useful information about the degree of damage and when the heart attack may have first occurred. W. B. Saunders Company.