Acute chest pain in an anxious woman

Chest pain in a young woman.

Chest pain in a young person is often caused by chest wall tenderness, associated with mitral valve prolapse, or attributed to psychologic factors. Ischemic cardiac pain may be overlooked because of its rare occurrence in this age group. A 35-year-old woman complained of substernal chest pressure precipitated by exertion and relieved by rest. The symptom had been noted for 15 years. Worsening o...

Pleuritic chest pain in a postpartum woman.

A 26-year-old woman, gravida 3, para 2, came to the emergency room complaining of pleuritic chest pain and shortness of breath. Twelve days prior, she had a vaginal delivery induced by pitocin. Her recovery was uneventful until the morning of admission when she awoke with bilateral pleuritic chest pain radiating to her shoulders, accompanied by dyspnea at rest. She also described mid-epigastric...

Acute pleuritic chest pain and lung mass in an elderly woman.

T his 67-year-old black woman presented to the emergency room with a three-day history of acute left-sided pleuritic chest pain, radiating into the left axilla. She was otherwise asymptomatic. The medical history was remarkable only for essential hypertension well controlled on metoprolol, hydrochlorothiazide, and enalapril. The patient denied a history of smoking; however, she had had previous...

An old woman with weight loss and chest pain.

Pulmonary sarcomas constitute only 0.1-0.5% of all primary lung malignancies. These tumors may derive from the lung parenchyma, bronchial tree or pulmonary arteries. The most important entity in the differential diagnosis is metastatic synovial sarcoma. A 76-years-old woman was admitted for investigation of a fever, productive cough, dyspnea, weight loss and left-sided chest pain which had been...

49-year-old woman with chest pain.