Chest pain of recent onset

My name is Sanjay Gupta and I am a cardiologist in York. If you would like to speak with me, you can do so via www.yorkcardiology.co.uk or my Facebook - [email protected]

Hi Guys

Today’s video is on the subject of chest pain of recent onset

On a daily basis I go to work and go on my coronary care unit to meet the patients who were admitted from the day before.

Many of them have had heart attacks and that is why they have been admitted.

And when I speak to them, I often hear patients say that they had been getting some discomfort a few days before but they thought it was indigestion or muscular or something else and therefore had chosen to ignore it off rather than seek help and I often end up berating them that they should have sought help earlier.

However when I am driving back home I often think in my own mind as to what I would do if I developed chest pains at night and if I was completely truthful it is very likely that I would do the same as my patients (despite knowing better!)

The problem is that all too often we put things off and hope they symptoms will just get better and also our healthcare system is so flawed that it can take ages to see a GP in the first instance.

So I wanted to do a video to help people make a more balanced and educated decision about when to ask for help



There are 3 things that you should take into account when you get chest discomfort:

1) The nature of the discomfort.
2) Your age
3) Whether you have risk factors such as smoking/ high blood pressure or high cholesterol


And all 3 have to be considered carefully

Lets talk about the nature of the discomfort first:
Typical Angina:
Constricting discomfort in the chest, back, shoulders, arms
Which gets worse with physical exertion
And gets better with rest or GTN spray

Atypical angina are if you only have 2 of the 3

Non angina chest pain if you have none of the following!

Risk factors:
If you have any of them, you should consider yourself at higher risk

Finally your age:
And your risks go up substantially from the age of 55 and above.