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Watching a child experience chest pain can make you want to rush them to the hospital instantly.
But here’s the thing: chest pain in children is almost never coming from the heart. Though chest pain is a precursor for heart attacks in many adults, for children the problem is often much easier to fix.
But how do you know when it’s serious enough to take a child to the ER?
Chest pain in patients between the ages of 10 to 21 causes over 650,000 emergency room visits per year, says U.S. News and World Report. However, 98 percent of cases don’t have a cardiac nature.
Most often, children will be asked questions, like what they were eating, what kind of physical activity they were doing, and where the pain is located.
Often, doctors will check hearts with a stethoscope just to make sure that’s not where it’s coming from. Physicians will also often try to reproduce the chest pain by pressing on the sternum, which would mean it’s coming from the chest wall and not the heart. This is the most common cause of chest pain in children, and can be fixed quickly with anti-inflammatories.
Often the underlying cause is something simple, like asthma, gastroesphageal reflux, or simple soreness of the sternum.
So if your child is experiencing chest pain, you can take comfort. Of course, it’s hard to watch a child suffer through that kind of pain, but it’s a comfort to know it’s most likely a temporary problem. But of course, seeing your doctor when your child is experiencing pain is always the best option.
