What causes chest tightness and pain? Don’t ignore this symptom!

When you feel inexplicable chest tightness or pain, many people do not pay attention to it. When you are in a bad mood, you may also feel chest tightness and pain. What is going on? However, if this symptom occurs for a long time, you should pay attention to whether there is any illness in your body. This may very well be a precursor to cardiovascular disease. So what is chest tightness and pain?

First of all, you should learn to self-detect the causes of chest tightness and chest pain

If the pain behind the sternum suddenly occurs after physical labor, emotional excitement, cold stimulation, or a full meal, and lasts for a short time, the pain radiates to the shoulders and inner side of the left arm, and the patient has a sense of squeezing or suffocation, or even a sense of impending death or fear, and is relieved by rest or sublingual nitroglycerin tablets, angina pectoris should be suspected;

If you feel dull pain and squeezing pain in the precordial area and behind the sternum, like a needle prick or a knife cutting, radiating to the left shoulder or inner side of the left arm, and rarely radiating to the neck, back, upper abdomen, and right shoulder, and last for 1 to 10 hours or several days, accompanied by cyanosis of the lips and limbs, you should suspect acute myocardial infarction;

Severe pain in the precordial area with a sense of tightness, radiating to the left shoulder, inner side of the left arm, left scapular area, back, neck, mandibular area and under the xiphoid process. The pain may be continuous or intermittent. Coughing, deep breathing, and raising the arm may aggravate the pain. This is more common in acute pericarditis.

Of course, the above situations are some of the more common and serious types of chest pain. There are many causes of chest pain and the mechanisms are complex. However, if you encounter the above situation, you should seek medical attention immediately as soon as possible, otherwise your life may be in danger.

How to deal with severe chest tightness and chest pain?

Emergency treatment of chest pain is more complicated. It varies depending on the cause. However, once chest pain occurs, especially in the elderly, the possibility of coronary heart disease must be considered. If there is a clear history of coronary heart disease, diagnosis will be easier. You should stop activities, rest, and take nitroglycerin sublingually. Contact a doctor as soon as possible and get treatment as soon as possible. Because the cause of the chest pain cannot be determined.

Chest pain is a common symptom, especially important for the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. Since the severity of chest pain is not necessarily consistent with the severity of the disease, if you find chest pain, you should go to the hospital for treatment in time. X-rays, electrocardiograms, and echocardiograms can often provide correct basis for diagnosis.

When severe chest pain occurs, if the patient is admitted to the hospital for treatment, the first issue to be addressed should be to clarify the cause of the chest pain through the patient's own self-diagnosis of the disease and related examinations. If pain relief is requested from the beginning, it will mask the nature of the pain and affect the identification of the cause of the chest pain. Treatment of chest pain is not a priority. The first issue should be to clearly diagnose the problem. Then carry out corresponding treatment according to different causes.