EMT Intermediate Practice Exam 2025 – Complete Prep Resource

When considering the use of nitroglycerin in a patient experiencing chest pain, it's important to recognize that nitroglycerin primarily works by dilating blood vessels, which helps to alleviate the workload on the heart and improve blood flow. If nitroglycerin is ineffective, the underlying cause of the chest pain, which may often be related to coronary artery disease, could lead to worsening cardiac conditions.

If nitroglycerin does not relieve the chest pain, it may indicate that the patient's condition is deteriorating. This could lead to progression of the underlying ischemia, resulting in a myocardial infarction (heart attack). Inadequate blood flow to the heart muscle can cause tissue damage, and without effective treatment, a patient might experience a progression from angina (chest pain due to insufficient blood flow) to a full-blown myocardial infarction, where the heart muscle starts to die due to lack of oxygen.

Addressing the other options, while decreased blood pressure can occur as a consequence of nitroglycerin's vasodilatory effects, it does not directly relate to the ineffectiveness of the drug in managing chest pain. A reduced heart rate, which might also be observed in some patients, is not a typical outcome directly linked to