Posted , 5 users are following.
For about 3 months now I've been back and forth my doctor and a&e with chest pain' disconfort , pain in my arms, shoulders and back and a heavy feeling on my chest. I do smoke on and off and have mental health. I've had ecg's and bloods they all keep coming back normal I'm really worried that something is going to happen to me. Please help....
0 likes, 11 replies
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derek76 kevin77180
Posted
Hospital told my wife once that 50% of people who come to A&E with chest pain have no reason for their symptoms.
Unfortunatly stress can cause so many symptoms. Get out and have good long regular walks in a park or in the country. That is a good stress buster especially if you take someone with you to share the experience and give you confidence in yourself.
Probably some of the medication you are on can cause many side effects.
kevin77180 derek76
Posted
rose77485 kevin77180
Posted
SwIFT kevin77180
Posted
I'm 25 years of age and have just got back from my local GP Surgery haven just collected a copy of my medical record because I'm unsatisfied with the standard of care that has been provided.. Consultations have been dismissive, discriminative, and negligent and have only received general health screeing (cholesterol, thyroid, blood count, blood pressure etc.) as well as an ECG due to persistently challenging my GP and refusing to be palmed off with health anxiety.
Also visited A&E last month reffered from 111 call which they provided an Ecg, X-Ray, Lung blow test and a urinalysis all of the above came back normal but I've experinced persistent chest pain centre left, lower right abdominal pain, visual disturbances, chronic fatigue, breathlessness, heart palpitations, itchiness (ankles, legs, chest) and dizziness.
I'm concerned my chest pain is possibly angina which is a symptom of coronary heart disease yet my GP is very dismissive and arrogant in his very brief short medical assessments (My GP Surgery schedules consultations for up to just 10 minutes) and GPs can see up to a total of 30 patients a day so feel they've provided me with a very basic service and are failing to investigate my serious symptoms.
I expect:
Consultation
Physical Examination
Medical Screening
Diagnosis
Prognosis
Treatment Plan
but my last consultation with a different GP after they're aware of my current course of action I've been told due to NICE guidelines I'm at low risk and do not meet the criteria to be refferred to a specialist. I need a cardiologist so I can have an echocardiogram and a angiogram to further investigate to confirm or to rule out angina but feel like I'll be forced to pay for private treatment. My medical record is extreamly vague, includes factually incorrect information with several omissions in regards to patient's symptoms, health concerns and risk factors so I encourage you to take the same course of action and request a full copy of your medical record. I've spent the past several weeks extensively looking into how primary and secondary care is delivered, how they're financed, managed and regulated as well as the challenges GPs and GP Surgerys face so feel confident in complaining to NHS Commissioners, General Medical Council and publically blogging about my treatment in the public domain.
Keep pursuing medical attention and don't let them make you feel like a nuisance, challenge your GP and strongly advise you voice record all future consultations and contact with medical professionals.. they're palming us both off treating us as an expense to be spared! We've only received simple tests which nor confirms nor disproves a medical condition so fail to see why they're using that as a basis to conclude and cease investigating symptoms?.
I have sought health information services online from NHS Choices, patient.info, webMD, Ehealth, and various other sources online due to the lack of care from my GP little to no time is taken to explain or to even discuss yet alone investigate symptoms so feel my continuing health concerns are very much validated and the only thing they've sought to do is give me verbal reassurance, low cost options such as waitful watching or nhs prescriptions and seemingly dismiss my health concerns largely based on my young age despite disclosing I've lived a sedentry lifestyle due to being unemployed and eat an unbalanced diet 3 servings in 1 meal per day: high in fat (saturated fat), salt, simple carbohydrates and spices which complaints from 2013 of throat discomfort (acid indigestion) went ignored till devoloping Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) diagnosed with the help of online services but the chest discomfort I'm now exerpincing is very different as I'm on medication but even this is not looked into as a possible cause and a lot of my symptoms, health concerns and risk factors have not been recorded thus not taken into account on next consultation so I have to question what they've been doing since I've attended 8 times this year
if you can afford to go private and use this experince to motivate yourself to keep in good health throughout the remainder of your life because I have no faith in NHS
derek76 SwIFT
Posted
Going private will probably cost you about £5K for all you want done, Nothing is cheap in the privarte sector.
Basic 12 lead ECG £128.50
24 hour ECG monitor £265.00
48 hour ECG monitor £387.00
7 day ECG monitor £509.00
24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitor £265.00
48 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitor £387.00
Combined ECG and ambulatory blood pressure monitor £320.50
Stress ECG £358.20
Echocardiogram £350.00
Stress Echocardiogram (excluding consultation fee) £700.00
TOE (excluding consultation fee) £1,770.00
Cardiac MRI £1,491.00
CT Coronary Angiography £1,190.00
CT Calcium Scoring £359.00
Cardiac Health Screen (prices according to age and sex) £354.00 to £528.00
SwIFT derek76
Posted
I have no idea of the status of my cardiovascular health with some symptoms subsiding and others setting in.. I feel a persistent dull ache centre left of chest area directly above the heart with tiredness and fatigue since 16th May .. this could be secondary response to my first episode of symptoms over the past couple months but the dull ache is much more persistent throughout day and feels stronger..
The cost of treatment summarizes everything profit before patients which does not excuse the manipulative deception that has been used to make the patient feel like a nuisance, financial burden and a hypercondriac. I went down their on Friday to visit a female GP who did not even wish to discusss my health concerns focusing sorely on Coronary Heart Disease and stressing how can they reassure me that the chances of me suffering with it would be like winning the lottery then pointing out 13 minutes has elasped and I'm taking away services from other patients and if I'm not satisfied with level of service I should find another surgery.
Viewing my medical record from an outside point of view is hard to tell why patient continues to return to surgery.. they've made it seem like I've casually strolled in off the street with nothing better to do with a phobia of having Cornory Heart Diesease but I made it clear from start I have cardiac (Cardiovacular Symptoms) and obviously want answers to the cause which little investigation has been done and only as a result of me continuing to return and insisting.. NHS Gps get paid upwards of £32 per scheduled 10 minute consultations? and tests they order or refferal treatment they provide the patient costs them money so is clear conflict of interest but DO NOT LIE TO ME about my health I may be costing them time and money but they've prodived a half ass pathetic service.
derek76 SwIFT
Posted
From the pain you describe no doctor will set you on a course for more tests. I have had that type of pain for over thirty years and it is not cardiac related. I still get it even after having had my aortic valve replaced.
As my wife was told after being admitted to hospital late at night and being tested all the next day "The cause of 50% of chest pain is never found" Read through UK Health and you wil find that is also true of most other symtoms that people have had investgated.
You cannot self refer to a cardiologist. If you want the tests privately your GP still has to refer you.
Good luck.
absa61081 kevin77180
Posted
I think you better see your doctor. I don't think age matters anyone can have a heart attack. It may not be common at that age but it is possible because I know someone who had to go for a bypass due to heart attack and he is only 32.
SwIFT kevin77180
Posted
Can you provide us with an update on your symptoms please? I'm experincing heart palpitations more frequently on/off throughout entire week as well as mental & pysicial fatigue, shortness of breath, dull chest ache with headaches etc. which I plan to book a double appointment (20minutes) with a GP but have a strong suspicion he'll suggest it's anxiety and maybe to an extent it's very possible the patient is now anixious having not received support from GP elasping over a several month period but both anixety and depression are common in response to patient's life changing circumstance such as a disease so should not be used to conclude and wrap up the service as being the root cause of the initial symptoms.
I feel returning to GP or A&E is pointless as they're so predictable in the tests that they'll provide and jump at the chance to conclude at the earliest stage or continue to dismiss & discharge patient as being nothing wrong despite failures in adequately investigating symptoms.. Patient's prioritise ruling out life threatening conditions whilst medical professionals delay and deny wishing to rule out simple conditions such as anxiety or musculoskeletal disorders undoubtedly due to cost and resource implications.
Florabunda kevin77180
Posted
It really sounds much more like muscular skeletal probelms than angina. It also sounds like you are very stressed.
Why not start taking a child's dose aspirin each day [75mg] as that is known to help prevent heart problems? Take one that dissolves and after food.
Remember indigestion and stress can produce pain - as can a pinched nerve.
Give it a try.
Q - does it come on with exercise?
derek76 Florabunda
Posted
By John Cleland, Professor of Clinical Cardiology at Imperial College London
Millions of people around the world take aspirin every day in the belief that it will prevent a heart attack or stroke.
But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the official body that regulates medicines in the U.S., has just announced that unless you have already had a heart attack or stroke, aspirin does more harm than good and should not be used for this purpose.
At last, people are beginning to scrutinise the evidence, separating the 'hype' from the facts and seeing sense.
For years, I have been saying that aspirin is being prescribed to people without evidence that they will benefit, but I seemed to be a lone voice. In this country, NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, recommends that people who are at increased risk of heart disease and stroke should take low-dose aspirin (75 mg each day) even if they have not had a heart attack or a
I think this advice should be reconsidered.
The cause of most heart attacks is rupture of cholesterol deposits (plaque) in the wall of the blood vessels supplying the heart muscle. Rupture of the plaque exposes the cholesterol 'soup' to the blood inside the artery, causing a blood clot.
Aspirin reduces the stickiness of the blood, which can prevent some blood clots forming and cause others to break up without doing too much harm. However, plaque rupture is also often caused by bleeding from tiny, fragile blood vessels that grow into the plaque from outside the artery wall.
So while aspirin could prevent some heart attacks, by stopping clots forming, it may trigger others by causing bleeding into the cholesterol plaque, resulting in no overall benefit in terms of heart attack or stroke prevention.
The FDA still suggests that aspirin is beneficial for people who've already had a heart attack or stroke, but I think the evidence for taking it for more than four weeks after such an event is also weak.
It would not matter if popping an aspirin every day were harmless, but it isn't. The FDA points out that aspirin can lead to all sorts of health problems, including bleeding in the stomach or brain.
So how is it that aspirin has had the green light for so long?
Thirty years ago there were very few effective medicines around for people with heart disease. Doctors were desperate for anything that might help. Aspirin was the 'straw that got clutched'.
Also, around this time, some of the most prestigious journals in the world published very biased reports of aspirin data that confused both doctors and regulators.
Take the U.S. Physicians' Health Study (published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1989). This looked at more than 22,000 U.S. doctors taking a regular dose of aspirin or a placebo to see if this could reduce deaths from heart disease.
The trial was stopped early because aspirin wasn't working: a similar number of doctors were dying of heart attacks in the aspirin group as in the placebo group.
After the study had finished, the investigators re-analysed the data, and found that the doctors in the aspirin group did have a lower risk of non-fatal heart attacks - in other words, aspirin did seem to reduce some types of heart attack. But there were more sudden deaths among those taking aspirin, and this wasn't taken into account.
If you're at risk of the sort of heart attack that gets you rushed to hospital for life-saving treatment, swapping it for a sudden death doesn't seem like a great idea.
Another often-forgotten trial compared aspirin and a placebo in 13,000 older people with a hip fracture to see if it could prevent pulmonary embolism, a blockage in the artery going to the lungs.
This study, published in the Lancet in 2000, found an increased risk of a heart attack among those taking aspirin but the result was buried in a footnote.
The only substantial study which supports the use of aspirin, in my opinion, is the ISIS-2 study, which enrolled about 17,000 patients who had a heart attack between 1985 and 1987. It showed that taking a daily dose of aspirin could help lower the risk of dying in the four weeks after a heart attack.
That's because after a heart attack, the ruptured plaque leaves a raw patch inside the artery. Giving aspirin in this situation helps prevent further blood clots forming on it. Maybe aspirin should be used more like antibiotics, as a short course after a heart attack or stroke, then stopped.
At the moment, for people who have not already experienced a heart attack or stroke, there is no evidence that the benefit of aspirin exceeds the harm that it can do. Even among people who have had a heart attack or stroke, questions remain about long-term benefit and safety.