Subscribe to our newsletter. Few symptoms are more alarming than chest pain. In the minds of many people, chest pain equals heart pain. And while many other conditions can cause chest pain, cardiac disease is so common and so dangerous that the symptom of chest pain should never be dismissed out of hand as being insignificant. The purpose of this article is to help you understand chest pain what it feels like, what might be causing it, how it should be evaluated, and when to treat it as an emergency.
Chest pain is an imprecise term.
It is often used to describe any pain, pressure, squeezing, choking, numbness or any other discomfort in the chest, neck, or upper abdomen, and is often associated with pain in the jaw, head, or arms. It can last from less than a second to days or weeks, can occur frequently or rarely, and can occur sporadically or predictably. With such a broad definition, you can see why the term chest pain is itself of little help to doctors. It is important to keep in mind that chest pain is merely a symptom, not a diagnosis. And because it can be a symptom of anything from a catastrophic to a trivial medical problem, when a person experiences chest pain it is important to try to characterize that pain as rapidly as possible as being either completely benign, or possibly significant.