The wait for an answer on what exactly caused Michael Jackson’s death continues. The Jackson family has asked for another autopsy after the first one came back inconclusive. Did he die of an overdose? Was it prolonged use of prescription medications? Could it have been stress leading to a heart attack? These questions will eventually be answered but there is one individual who might be able to shed light on the situation more immediately. Dr. Conrad Murray, a Los Angeles-based cardiologist, was Jackson’s personal physician and presumably the last person to see him alive. ESSENCE.com sat down with Dr. Carlos S. Ince, Jr., president of the Black Cardiologist Association in Baltimore, to find out what happened during Jackson’s autopsy, what he thinks the pop star may have died from, and what could have been done to save Jackson’s life.

ESSENCE.COM: The cause of death has come back “deferred.” What does that mean and what will happen next?
DR. CARLOS INCE: They did the part of the autopsy that takes really just looks at the tissue itself after taking biopsies of the liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart, brain and viles of blood. One of the things I suspect they looked for immediately is if there were changes in the heart muscle to suggest a heart attack. Based on what I’ve heard, I can only surmise that it wasn’t a massive heart attack because that would have been fairly obvious and would have explained what happened. Now, they have to wait for four to six weeks for the toxicology report.

ESSENCE.COM: So what’s the difference between a heart attack and going into cardiac arrest?
DR. CARLOS INCE: There are three major arteries in the heart. If one or more of those vessels becomes occluded where there is a disruption of blood flow to the tissue and the tissue dies, that’s a heart attack. Cardiac arrest is when the heart actually stops beating. You can have a heart attack which causes a cardiac arrest but there are other things that can also cause a cardiac arrest.

(source)

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