Clinical characteristics of children and adolescents admitted with chest pain

Abstract

Abstract Background: Chest pain is a common disease in children. Chest pain is the second most common symptom referred to by paediatric cardiologists after cardiac murmurs. Objective: In this prospective study, we aimed to evaluate clinical characteristics and causes of chest pain in children admitted to our paediatric cardiology outpatient clinics. Methods: We conducted this prospective study among 446 patients with chest pain in a tertiary care hospital from 1 June 2017 to 1 June 2020. The demographic data and clinical characteristics of the patients were analysed. All patients were evaluated with a medical history, physical examination, laboratory tests, electrocardiogram and echocardiogram and if necessary telecardiogram, 24-hour electrocardiogram monitoring, exercise stress test and psychological evaluation were made. Results: The ratio of admissions with acute pain was 4% when 20% of the patients had chronic chest pain. The most common symptoms associated with chest pain were shortness of breath and palpitations. The non-cardiac causes were as follows: 25% musculoskeletal, 14% psychological, 9% respiratory, and 7% gastrointestinal, respectively. We found cardiac chest pain in 49 (11%) of patients. Idiopathic chest pain was found in 153 (34%) patients. Conclusions: Our study showed that the aetiology of chest pain in children and adolescents admitted with chest pain is mostly due to non-cardiac causes. We found the slightly frequency of elevated rate for cardiac aetiologies of paediatric chest pain compared to the literature. We suggest that in addition to anamnesis and careful examination, further investigation, if necessary, is important in determining the aetiology of chest pain.