Adolescent Chest Pain—Is It the Heart?

Abstract

Adolescents frequently present to the emergency department with chest pain. Unlike adult patients with chest pain, most studies have shown that adolescents with this complaint rarely have serious organic pathology. For many adolescents, the symptom of chest pain is not acute in nature, and it is uncommon for an adolescent with this complaint to present with significant distress or require immediate resuscitation. However, an adolescent with chest pain should still be approached carefully and promptly because serious medical conditions can be present. The emergency physician should consider important cardiac causes of chest pain in adolescents, such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, drug abuse (cocaine and others), myocarditis, and pericarditis.