Introduction:

Pediatric precordial pain is a frequent cause for pediatric consultation in the emergency room (ER) services - about 0.3-0.6% of all consultations - and it can cause a lot of stress to families who tend to associate it with a more severe pathology, this pathology mostly presents itself between the ages of 11 and 14 years.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to determine the precordial pain’s etiology and to analyze the semiology and approach toward the ailment by ER service in a private hospital.

Methods:

A retrospective, observational, descriptive, transversal study that took place from January 2014 to May 2017.

Results:

A total of 48 precordial pain patients were identified, four of them had a positive family background. Most of the pain was not referred as associated to symptoms, and the type of pain was non-specific in 62% of the cases. The most frequent duration of the pain was < 8 h in 54.1% and without any irradiation. There was only one case associated with the presence of cardiac precordial pain pathology regarding pulmonary hypertension; this signified an incidence of 2%, similar to what has been previously published in other articles.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in English     · English ( pdf )