OBJECTIVES We compared depressive symptoms and healthcare utilization in patients admitted for noncardiac chest pain, acute myocardial infarction, and angina pectoris after hospitalization and at 1-year follow-up. METHODS One hundred and thirty-one patients with noncardiac chest pain, 66 with acute myocardial infarction, and 70 with angina pectoris completed a depression screening questionnai...

Out of 368 patients admitted to hospital for chest pain and suspected acute myocardial infarction, 267 were discharged within 24 hours on the basis of the clinical picture, electrocardiogram, and serum activities of aspartate transaminase, alpha-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase, and creatine phosphokinase. The patients were followed up for 28 days, during which 17 were readmitted, two of them twic...

Acute chest pain is one of the most common causes of emergency department (ED) visits. In the United States, more than 5 million people attend the ED with chest pain each year, and more than 3 million of these patients are hospitalized because of this condition at a cost of more than 6 billion dollars1–3. Early recognition of clinically life-threatening conditions, such as pulmonary embolism, a...

BACKGROUND Evaluation of acute chest pain in emergency department (ED), using limited resource and time, is still very difficult despite recent development of many diagnostic tools. In this study, we tried to determine the applicability of new semi-automated cardiac function analysis tool, velocity vector imaging (VVI), in the evaluation of the patients with acute chest pain in ED. METHODS We...

Background In future Denmark the majority of acute admissions passes through Emergency and Acute Admission Departments (EAAD). For patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) considerable improvements have been achieved through the Cardiac Care Units (CCU). Among patients with acute chest pain only a minority have an ACS. This raises the question if it is possible to separate patients with a hi...

Acute chest pain is a challenging clinical problem, commonly encountered in emergency departments. Appropriate management and treatment of acute chest pain requires a careful assessment of patients to predict the probability of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and initiate immediate treatment. Generally low-risk patients with negative serial electrocardiograms and cardiac injury markers have to un...

SEVERE or intractable chest pain, associated with sweating, vomiting, precipitate fall of arterial blood pressure, fever, and evidence of shock or collapse, clearly indicates a diagnosis of acute myocardial infaretion. In marked contrast is the entity of angina pectoris, with its paroxysms of chest pain after effort, typical radiation of pain into the arm, feeling of viselike constriction in th...

SEVERE or intractable chest pain, associated with sweating, vomiting, precipitate fall of arterial blood pressure, fever, and evidence of shock or collapse, clearly indicates a diagnosis of acute myocardial infaretion. In marked contrast is the entity of angina pectoris, with its paroxysms of chest pain after effort, typical radiation of pain into the arm, feeling of viselike constriction in th...

AIM To test accuracy and reproducibility of gestalt to predict obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with acute chest pain. METHODS We studied individuals who were consecutively admitted to our Chest Pain Unit. At admission, investigators performed a standardized interview and recorded 14 chest pain features. Based on these features, a cardiologist who was blind to other clini...

SEVERE or intractable chest pain, associated with sweating, vomiting, precipitate fall of arterial blood pressure, fever, and evidence of shock or collapse, clearly indicates a diagnosis of acute myocardial infaretion. In marked contrast is the entity of angina pectoris, with its paroxysms of chest pain after effort, typical radiation of pain into the arm, feeling of viselike constriction in th...