SCP Foundation

Let's say that while someone is concious something presses their heart, as if someone just grabbed the heart with their fist and pressed, but not enough to basicly destroy it.

What would happen then? Would the person fall unconcious? Would they have a heart attack? I needed to know this for a part of my skip.

Probably nothing if the force is in sufficient to inflict injury.

Probably a fair bit of uneasiness and discomfort, but I imagine it wouldn't be too bad if the force exerted is similar to a very friendly and very clingy bear hug.

I tried searching up "how much pressure can the human heart withstand before damage" but all I got were some questionable articles on blast and water pressure and the like. (here's one: http://www.medicaldaily.com/breaking-point-how-much-water-pressure-can-human-body-take-347570)

Consider maybe using Google scholar to take a look at how pressure affects arteries/veins/etc. and how that impacts heart performance, but I don't think there would be any peer-reviewed studies on squishing a heart for obvious reasons. Can't imagine writing up an IRB for that.

Thank you both for your help!

And yeah, can't imagine someone really looking much into it, guess I'll have to use some speculation along with what I can find.

I've heard of cases in emergency situations where surgeons manually pumped people's hearts. I'm not finding much technical on initial googling, and I'm not super inclined to dig further (due to squick). There's probably more about it, though.

I know that hitting or bumping the heart is a bad thing; it can throw off the heart's rhythm, sending it into Atrial (bad) or Ventricular(REALLY bad) Fibrillation. There's also the problem of a bruised heart, which opens up a whole can of worms.

It's part of the kernel of truth behind the mythical "death punch": if a trained boxer or martial artist punches you really, really hard in the ribs in exactly the right place it can cause either or both of these. This is kind of the reason we have ribs, in fact- they're basically a roll cage for the heart, lungs, and diaphragm.

On the upside, it's also one of the few times where "hit it again" actually can work sometimes. It's part of the reason that you do chest compressions in CPR, and you'll sometimes see people who probably should have a pacemaker hit themselves in the chest when they experience angina- you can sometimes bump the heart back into rhythm.