Chest pains in healthy teens? Check for heart attack
October 4, 2007 by Grace Ibay
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Heart attack may be the last thing on your mind if your healthy teenager complains of severe chest pains radiating from the left arm or jaw.
But the October issue of the journal Pediatrics says, don’t rule out heart attack just yet.
“Emergency care for adolescents with chest pain should include cardiac enzyme and electrocardiographic workups,” said John R. Lane, M.D., and Giora Ben-Shachar, M.D., both of Akron Children’s Hospital.
Lane and Ben-Shachar looked at the cases of nine healthy patients ages 12 to 20 complaining of heart attack and found that all had elevated cardiac enzymes including some that could be indicators of a heart attack. The study suggests to rule out heart attack, or MI (myocardial infarction) by testing for cardiac enzymes.
Heart attacks in children and adolescents are rare if the child has no heart defects and doesn’t abuse drugs.
Note, however, that MI is possible, so evaluation of chest pain in an adolescent is warranted.
source: MedPage Today
Tags: heart attack, teenager, chest pain, myocardial infarction, MI, health
This is so true, we actually had an 18 year old present with chest pains and l arm numbness, the docs were thinking pinched nerve or strained chest muscle, but it was indeed an infarct. The child had a strong family history, but was fit otherwise. You just never know, thank goodness we drew the Trop’s and CK’s and put them on the EKG machine! Always safer than sorry!!