Minor Chest Pain After Vaccine?

ythannah wrote: »

nooshi713 wrote: »

Speakeasy76 wrote: »

darreneatschicken wrote: »

I had an ECG done today at the ER and the doctor said that I was fine. He implied that I was just experiencing anxiety.

It could also be heartburn I think. For example, I noticed the pain flare up yesterday, while eating dinner.

This infuriates me. Not because you went to the ER, ,but 1. You were only given an EKG to determine there was nothing wrong with your heart and 2. Multiple health care providers have implied that it's anxiety. It could be, but there are soany other things it could be as well--it's just a copout for them.

I'm going to get on my soapbox here because this is something that is close to my heart (no pun intended). I'm telling you this not to worry you or make you think that this is what's going on, but to educate you and others as it appears medical professionals are still not educated. My otherwise perfectly healthy, hardly-ever-sick father passed away very unexpectedly and suddenly from an aortic dissection. Unfortunately for him there were no warning signs in his case and my mom found him dead on the floor. In the actor John Ritter's case, he was having chest pains and taken to the ER. He was given an EKG and sent away because it was normal, probably even told it was anxiety. The problem is that an EKG only can determine if someone is having a heart attack, and is normal in someone who is having an aortic dissection. You may know that John Ritter passed away later (that same day, actually), also from an aortic dissection (as did the actor Alan Thicke).

Again, I highly doubt this is what's going on with you, but for anyone experiencing chest pain I highly encourage you to ask for an echocardiogram, or at least seek out a 2md opinion from a cardiologist.

As an ER provider who sees chest pain patients all of the time at our STEMI center, I can say that an Echo and cardiology consultation is not indicated for young people with chest pain, no risk factors, and normal EKGs. If we called cardiology on this case, they would laugh at us. There aren’t enough resources to do full cardiac work ups on low risk patients to try to catch one in a million problems. If we did this on all our young low risk chest pains, we would have no room for the very sick and dying or people who are actually having heart attacks. People who are not in health care don’t understand how it works and have very unrealistic expectations. A simple EKG, maybe chest X-ray are the standard of care for young and low risk patients. If his oxygen was low or heart rate persistently elevated, he might warrant a ddimer lab test.

At the other end of the age spectrum, all chest pain is treated like a possible heart attack.

Last fall (age 56) I went to ER because I had been experiencing chest pain for the past month and it was steadily worsening. As it was completely movement-generated pain I thought I had pulled a muscle, badly. I was very specific when asked about my symptoms that it was related to movement, that it was STERNUM pain, and the length of time I'd had it (if I'd been having a heart attack I would have been dead long since). It probably doesn't help that I do have MVP with regurgitation.

Nope. The first thing they did was testing for a heart attack. Although they also did a chest X ray, which was why I went to ER in the first place rather than try to get a phone appointment with my dr six weeks down the road to get the X ray req. The eventual diagnosis was costochondritis... harmless but incredibly painful.

Incidentally, it flared up again about a week before my first vaccination. Had it reoccurred after the shot, I might well have blamed the vaccine for it.

Speakeasy76 wrote: »

As you mentioned, though very rare, some of the other risks for vaccines like pericarditis couldn't be determined by an EKG