HMS, pain in chest and possible misdiagnosis of asthma
Posted , 2 users are following.
My 19 year old daughter has hyper mobility. She has had a lot of the 'normal' complications - dislocating shoulder, back problems, had keyhole surgery on her wrist etc. She, like many others, is an ex gymnast and still likes to keep fit but quite often experiences severe chest pains in her breastbone area whilst excercising. She has had tests on her heart etc so any problem there has been ruled out. She has now been given inhalers by her GP despite her peak flow being fine and no wheezing. My gut feeling is that she is not asthmatic and that the pain is connected to the cartilage in her chest and that the pain is triggered when she is breathing deeply. Now that one person has labelled her as asthmatic tho, we are having trouble getting anyone to listen to us. Has anyone else experienced chest pains? I am really concerned that she is being led down the inhaler/steroid route when she doesn't need to be.
0 likes, 2 replies
rakkinola lisab13
Posted
My daughter is also a very active equestrian and gymnast & had the same symptoms as your daughter. Our ortho told us it was costochondritis after a trip to the ER. Essentially hypermobility causes rib subluxation and it can cause the sternum to become inflamed as well as intercoastal muscle issues. It mirrors the pain of a heart attack...we also went the EKG cardiac ultrasound testing route first! He ended up prescribing oral and topical anti-inflammatory meds & PT to help build thoracic muscle
lisab13 rakkinola
Posted
Thanks for your reply. I have done a lot of reading as you can imagine and costochondritis kept coming up a lot so it's good to know that the symptoms your daughter has are very similar to my daughters. When her heart tests came back as ok, our GP just seemed to lose interest! I have now emailed the main hospital in our area and got the name of a HMS specialist so I'm going to get a referral to him. Thanks for putting my mind at rest a little.