Cardiac conditions

Chest Pain / Discomfort

Heart Attack

If you think that you are having a heart attack call 999 now, you need urgent medical assessment by a healthcare professional. Time is muscle, the earlier you get help the less damage will be done to your heart and the greater your chance of a full recovery.

Acute Chest Pain

If your chest pain/discomfort is new, it is advisable to call either your doctor, NHS 111 or an ambulance (999) immediately. Although there are many causes of chest pain, in order to detect a heart attack prior to significant damage being done to the heart you may need three simple procedures to be done.

• Clinical assessment by a health professional
• Electrocardiogram (ECG)
• Blood test for cardiac enzymes

Do not feel embarrassed about seeking help for your chest pain as cardiac chest pain is a life-threatening condition. Other less serious conditions can mimic cardiac chest pain, however it is vital to be assessed by a healthcare professional to determine whether your pain is cardiac in origin.

Intermittent Chest Pain / Discomfort

Chest pain or chest discomfort may represent a serious underlying cardiac condition and therefore requires rapid investigation. Cardiac chest pain can present itself in a variety of ways. Classic cardiac chest pain is recognised as being a tight central chest discomfort that may radiate to the jaw, back or arms. This may occur on exertion or at rest and in more severe cases may be associated with nausea, sweating and breathlessness. Not all cardiac chest pain is so typical and any new chest, abdominal, throat or back discomfort should be taken seriously and medical advice should be sought. This is particularly important if there are associated risk factors such as raised blood pressure, raised blood cholesterol, elevated LPa, high visceral fat burden, diabetes, a family history of heart disease, and any history of smoking or illicit drug use.

With state-of-the-art technology it is usually now possible to determine the presence of coronary artery disease (dangerous narrowing of the blood vessels that take blood to the heart muscle) without an invasive test.

In virtually all cases a combination of blood tests, an electrocardiogram (ECG), a cardiac ultrasound scan (echocardiogram) and a cardiac CT scan is sufficient to ascertain with a high degree of certainty whether there is underlying coronary artery disease.

Dr Hickman also uses the latest HeartFlow technology to assess whether a coronary artery narrowing would benefit from stent.  Further analysis of the CT scan using CaRiHeart also gives an extremely accurate prediction of risk over subsequent years of dying from heart disease.