Is it just indigestion….or is it really your heart?
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007How do you know if the pain or pressure in your chest is just indigestion…or is it something more serious? You may think to yourself, “Could this discomfort in the center of my chest be the beginnings of a heart attack?”
Well the simple answer is this: “It could just be indigestion….or it could really be your heart, you and I just don’t know.”—until more tests are done.
Even after years of training at one of the top hospitals in the country, I still can’t predict if someone’s chest pain, chest pressure or upper abdominal discomfort is just indigestion that you and I can ignore and hope it will go away or if their pain is a sign of something more serious. Even after interviewing hundreds of patients who’ve come into the emergency department with a chief complaint of chest pain or stomach pain or even back pain, I can’t accurately tell you that this 60 year old woman is experiencing a blockage in the arteries supplying her heart or that 50 year old man is just having a panic attack.
And if I can’t tell the difference….then neither can you.
I’m not trying to belittle your intelligence or minimize your educational background. I’m trying to help you understand that even as a Board certified physician, I cannot always correctly diagnose angina on questioning alone. Angina is a medical term we use to describe chest discomfort or pain that is directly related to transient blockage in arteries supplying the heart leading to decreased blood flow and therefore, decreased oxygen to your heart. I can ask you so many questions about your symptoms…about your complaints until I’m blue in the face but if I don’t take the time to literally see how well your heart is functioning, I can’t clearly get a true and real picture of your heart until further studies are done.
This means that you can’t sit around at home on your computer looking up medical diagnoses to self-diagnose your problem. You can’t ignore that burning or pressure like tightness in your chest hoping that it will just go away.
And here’s why…..Yesterday I had to tell a 51 year man that he made the right decision to listen to his friend and come to the hospital to get his heart checked out. He had been suffering with chest pressure on and off for the past week and a half. He had initially ignored the tightness in his chest thinking that it was heartburn that would go away. Even after he started having tingling in this left hand, he didn’t think much of it. Pain in his neck didn’t even convince him that he needed to go to the hospital. He would have continued to ignore his symptoms had it not been for a good friend who told him that he needed to seek medical attention.
This good friend told him what he needed to hear at the time he needed to hear it. His friend advised him to “just go and check it out.” And that he did.
I’m still waiting on all of the special tests but my patient is in the right place at the right time—in the hospital hooked up to a heart monitor so we can observe him closely and give him the medications he needs until we determine if he has heart disease or not. He will undergo additional testing to show if he has any significant blockages in the arteries that supply his heart such as an angiogram (a procedure that shows a pictorial display of his heart’s arteries) or even open heart surgery to repair the blockages.
In the matter of minutes, you could be thinking about heartburn or indigestion and in the next minute, come face to face with your mortality looking the heart surgeon in the face, stunned and speechless as he explains opening up your chest for heart bypass surgery.
So the next time you experience a pain or pressure in your chest that just won’t go away and keeps coming back—don’t wait. Get to an emergency department IMMEDIATELY and get checked out! You’ll put your mind—and your heart—at ease.
To your wellness,
The Health and Wellness Queen
