Assessing Chest Pain

Resource Overview

The patient presenting with chest pain is very common in medical practice, in both the acute and non-acute settings. Differentiating cardiac chest pain from other causes can be a challenge for clinicians. This resource is designed to help increase your knowledge of potential causes of chest pain and to help improve your skills in its diagnosis.

Aims and Objectives

On completion of this resource, you should be able to:

• Discuss the importance of effective history taking when assessing chest pain
• Describe the key features of chest pain which affect the likely diagnosis
• Broadly describe how to differentiate between cardiac and non-cardiac chest pain
• Apply evidence-based guidelines when deciding how to manage chest pain at the initial presentation