Heart Disease

What Medications Are Used to Treat a Heart Attack?

The goals of medication therapy are to break up or prevent blood clots, prevent platelets from gathering and sticking to the plaque, stabilize the plaque and prevent further ischemia.

These medications must be given as soon as possible (within one to two hours from the start of your heart attack) to decrease the amount of heart damage. The longer the delay in starting these drugs, the more damage can occur and the less benefit they can provide.

Medications for this purpose may include:

Aspirin to prevent blood clotting that may worsen the heart attack.

Antiplatelets to prevent blood clotting.

Thrombolytic therapy ("clot busters") to dissolve any blood clots that are present in the heart's arteries.

Any combination of the above

Other drugs, given during or after a heart attack, lessen your heart's work, improve the functioning of the heart, widen or dilate your blood vessels, decrease your pain and guard against any life-threatening heart rhythms.