Chest Pain In Children

Chest pain is a common presenting complaint in children, accounting for an estimated 650,000 ED visits annually and 0.6% of all visits. Most are due to non-life-threatening conditions, and only 2% require hospital admission. Causes include chest wall pains (24% to 41 %), idiopathic (12% to 21 %), pulmonary disease (cough, pneumonia, asthma combine for 21 %), minor trauma (5%), and psychogenic (5% to 9%). Cardiac causes (including SVT and bradycardia, among others) constitute less than 5%. The vast majority of cases require only a history and physical for diagnosis. Family history of MI is actually associated with decreased likelihood of an organic cause of pain.

Causes

• If you have lung infections, such as include pneumonia or bronchitis then it may cause chest pain.
• Mostly the chest pain is caused by hacking cough. Coughing may cause sore muscles in the chest wall, upper abdomen or diaphragm. Chest pain may also cause by strenuous exercise, lifting weights or heavy boxes.
• Chest pain may cause from harmless muscle cramps or a pinched nerve. Heart disease is hardly ever the cause of chest pain in children.
• The most common cause of recurrent chest pains in adolescents and adults is the precordial catch syndrome.

Symptoms

• Chest pain of acute onset and pain awakening a child from sleep are associated with organic disease (3 and 3.6-fold increased likelihood, respectively).
• Features or past medical history suggestive of one of the entities discussed in the previous sections (especially pneumonia, pneumothorax, pericarditis or pericardial tamponade, traumatic aortic rupture, or esophageal foreign body-the others being very uncommon in children) should also elicit further clinical investigation.
• Kawasaki's disease is a rare cause of pain and one of the few causes of ischemic cardiac disease in children.

Signs

• Fever (12-fold increased likelihood of organic disease), tachycardia, and other abnormal physical findings may warrant additional testing in the ED.

Treatment

• You can use heating pad or warm compress on the chest area for the treatment of chest pain. You should take your child's temperature at least once each morning and each evening.
• Pneumonia means lungs infections can be treated with oral antibiotics. The type of antibiotic used depends on the type of pneumonia.
• The potassium-channel activator nicorandil is also beneficial for the treatment of chest pain. Because it reduces the muscular tension in the blood vessel walls, expanding them and improving the flow of blood and the supply of oxygen.