Chest Pain

Book excerpt: Chest Pain: Advanced Assessment and Management promotes a systematic approach to the assessment and management of patients presenting with chest pain and related undifferentiated symptoms. Specifically, it equips practitioners with the knowledge and clinical skills needed to effectively differentiate and respond to clinical presentations where the primary symptom for seeking healthcare advice involves chest pain. Introductory chapters in section one explore the principles of physical assessment, history taking and differential diagnosis to provide the framework for subsequent chapters, which explore cardiac and non-cardiac causes of chest pain. Section two examines the advanced assessment and overall management of patients with pain in the chest. A range of clinical conditions that trigger chest pain and other related symptoms are covered, including: angina, acute coronary syndromes, pericarditis and myocarditis, aortic dissection, pulmonary embolism, oesophago-gastric disorders, musculoskeletal causes, pulmonary and respiratory causes, coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, chest pain caused by trauma or cardiac syndrome X, cocaine misuse and Herpes zoster.