Psychological aspects of non-cardiac chest pain

Abstract

Approximately 30% of patients visiting a cardiologist for the first time with complaints of chest pain appear to have normal coronary arteries. These patients generally have a higher prevalence of atypical chest pain, are relatively young, often female, in most cases suffer from panic disorder and have high scores on depression and anxiety scales. In this article some of the recent studies conducted in this particular line of research are reviewed and some possible explanations for the relationship between complaints and non-cardiac findings are presented. Furthermore, the ability of predicting non-cardiac chest pain from psychological factors and a range of follow-up studies are discussed. Finally the possibilities of treating cardiac phobia are mentioned.