Acute coronary syndrome (unstable angina and heart attack) and cholesterol

Your heart is a muscular pump a little larger than a fist, which keeps blood moving around your body. If your heart doesn’t work properly, or if there is a narrowing or blockage in an artery, it can cause serious problems.

Acute coronary syndrome, or ACS, is a term that describes any of a group of conditions related to chest pain caused by a sudden lack of blood flow to the arteries supplying blood to the heart. 'Acute' means sudden onset, 'coronary' refers to arteries supplying the heart with blood, and 'syndrome' means a group of conditions that make up a disease. So, ACS is a general term that describes the sudden onset of conditions that can affect your heart. The two main conditions that make up ACS are unstable angina and myocardial infarction (heart attack).

Excess ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein, a type of fat in the body) may be stored as small, fatty lumps (plaques) on the walls of your arteries (blood vessels that carry blood from your heart to the rest of your body), which can cause them to narrow and may lead to angina. A large lump can even cause a blockage. If some of the fatty lump breaks away from the coronary artery wall, a blood clot is formed. If this clot then blocks the artery, blood will not be able to flow through it properly or it may not be able to flow through it at all. This causes ACS (unstable angina or heart attack).

If you have cardiovascular disease (which includes unstable angina and/or heart attack), NICE guidelines and leading UK heart doctors recommend keeping a careful check on your cholesterol level or 'number'.

It is also important that people with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and/or chronic kidney disease (CKD) and those who have suffered from a stroke, manage their cholesterol level.