BACKGROUND Acute chest pain is a major health problem all over the western world. Active approaches are directed towards diagnosis and treatment of potentially life threatening conditions, especially acute coronary syndrome/ischemic heart disease. However, according to the literature, chest pain may also be due to a variety of extra-cardiac disorders including dysfunction of muscles and joints ...

Chest pain is a common reason for presentation to the emergency department (ED). Absolute criteria for Acute Coronary Syndrome without ST elevation (NSTE-ACS) are lacking. An acute coronary syndrome (ACS) needs to be distinguished from a variety of other cardiac and non-cardiac diseases that may cause chest pain.For patients with confirmed ACS, several scoring methods can be applied in order to...

A 48 year old man presented with cardiac tamponade six weeks after an apparently minor penetrating chest injury. Thoracotomy showed a haemopericardium with no actively bleeding vessel. Re-investigation eleven months later, prompted by persistent chest pain, showed the presence of a fistula between the second diagonal of the left anterior descending coronary artery and a cardiac vein.

BACKGROUND Chest pain is a common reason for referral to pediatric cardiologists. Although pediatric chest pain is rarely attributable to serious cardiac pathology, extensive and costly evaluation is often performed. We have implemented a standardized approach to pediatric chest pain in our pediatric cardiology clinics as part of a broader quality improvement initiative termed Standardized Clin...

BACKGROUND Patients with low-risk chest pain have high utilization of stress testing and cardiac imaging, but low rates of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The objective of this study was to determine whether the HEART score could safely reduce objective cardiac testing in patients with low-risk chest pain. METHODS A cohort of chest pain patients was identified from an emergency department-base...

background although the aim of cardiac computed tomographic angiography (cta) is to visualize the cardiac, coronary, and great vessels, portions of noncardiac structures such as lung, mediastinum, bones and abdomen are visible on the scan. some have suggested that the scans should be evaluated in all field of view. some other believe that reporting accidental findings can lead to unnecessary fo...

Typical stable angina is a clinical diagnosis based on history. The challenge for GPs in primary care is to identify those patients who are presenting with either possible or typical angina symptoms and refer onwards for specialist assessment in the local Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic (RACPC). Our initial information gathering study suggested that referring GPs may be cautiously overdiagnosing...

DESCRIPTION A 48-year-old woman was referred for investigation of chest pain. While having a treadmill exercise tolerance test she developed marked ST-segment elevation with chest pain during stage 1 of the Bruce protocol (figure 1), which resolved promptly at the end of the exercise (figure 2). The patient was transferred to the cardiac catheterisation laboratory for emergent coronary angiogra...