Is Chest Pain Always Heart-Related? 

At the mention of chest pain, most people automatically jump to heart attack. Though chest pain is certainly one of the hallmarks of heart disease, other roads to chest pain don’t involve your cardiovascular system.

To give you an idea, acid reflux, which affects up to 20% of the population, is the leading cause of chest pain. That’s why acid reflux has earned the name heartburn.

To paint a clearer picture of chest pain, we turn to board-certified cardiologist Dr. Satjit Bhusri and the team at Upper East Side Cardiology.

Chest pain that’s related to heart issues

Let’s kick off this discussion with some of the heart conditions that count chest pain among the symptoms, starting with heart attacks, which occur every 40 seconds in the United States.

The chest pain that often accompanies a heart attack is sudden and severe, and it’s often accompanied by shortness of breath, heart palpitations, cold sweat, fatigue, dizziness, and nausea.

Other cardiovascular conditions that can lead to chest pain include:

• Coronary artery disease, which affects one in 20 adults over the age of 20
• Coronary artery dissection
• Pericarditis
• Aortic aneurysm
• Aortic stenosis
• Cardiomyopathy
• Mitral valve prolapse
• Arrhythmias

Each of these conditions can be serious, which is why we always counsel patients never to ignore chest pain.

Non-heart-related chest pain

Now let's shift our focus to conditions that cause chest pain, but that are not related to your cardiovascular health. These conditions often involve your digestive and lung health, but other conditions outside these areas can cause chest pain. Some examples of each of these include:

• Gastroesophageal reflux disease
• Esophagitis
• Hiatal hernia
• Ulcers
• Pancreatitis
• Pulmonary embolism
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Asthma
• Sprained chest muscle
• Broken ribs

Another common road to chest pain is a panic attack, which can lead to tightness in your chest and shortness of breath. In fact, panic disorders send millions of people to emergency rooms each year for fear of a heart attack.

When is chest pain serious?

Our goal in providing these long lists of conditions that can lead to chest pain is to give you a better idea of the breadth and scope of chest pain as a symptom.

As heart health specialists, our guiding principle is that all chest pain should be treated as serious until proven otherwise. So, if you’ve never had chest pain and it comes on, please don’t hesitate to see us — we offer cardiac urgent care for just this purpose.

Please note that if the chest pain comes on suddenly and feels like an emergency, please call 911 immediately.

Outside of heart health, if you know you have an underlying condition that can lead to chest pain, you should alert the specialists in charge about your pain so they can monitor it more closely.

The bottom line is to err on the side of caution when it comes to chest pain. If you have more questions about chest pain, we’re a great resource, and we invite you to

contact our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Call our team at 212-752-3464 or request information online by clicking here.