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EM Clerkship

Chest Pain

EM Clerkship

Zack Olson, MD ; Mike Estephan, MD ; Maddie Watts, MD

Health & Fitness, Science, Education, Medicine, Life Sciences

4.9816 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2016

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary


There are six cardiopulmonary causes of chest pain that you need to know.



The SIX Causes



* Cardiac* Acute coronary syndrome (ACS)* Pericarditis with tamponade* Pulmonary* Pneumonia* Pneumothorax* Vascular* Pulmonary embolism* Aortic dissection



Step 1: Core Measures



* Aspirin* EKG



Step 2: Look for the “King” (Acute Coronary Syndrome)



* Four high yield symptoms* Radiation to the RIGHT shoulder* Vomiting* Worsens with exertion* Diaphoresis



Step 3: Look for the “Queen” (Pulmonary Embolism)



* Wells score* PERC rule



Step 4: Print a Previous Cath Report



* Major bonus points with attending!* Other useful information* Previous echocardiograms* Previous stress tests* Previous CTAs for PE



Step 5: Basic Testing Plan



* If concerned for cardiac causes* Troponin* If concerned for pulmonary causes* Chest x-ray* If concerned for vascular causes* CTA of the chest



Additional Reading



* STEMI (EM Clerkship)* Pulmonary Embolism (EM Clerkship)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, med students. This episode has been sponsored by Freed AI. Do you dread the thought of

0:07.1

endless charting once you become a doctor? Do you think that doctors should be spending more

0:11.9

time with our patients and less time mindlessly writing notes? Freed AI is the product for you. It is a

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secure, hippocompliant scribe that anybody can use.

0:24.7

Focus your energy on what matters, providing good patient care.

0:29.5

Use coupon code EM50 to save 50% the first month you try it,

0:34.1

and you can cancel at any time if you decide it's not right for you. You can learn more

0:38.9

at www.gitfreed.a.i. Hello, med students. My name is Zach Olson, and today we are going to address

0:50.5

one of the core chief complaints. I'm going to give you an approach to chest pain.

0:57.2

You really need to pay attention today. It's really important, guys. In this episode, there is one

1:02.7

thing about chest pain that I need you to understand. If you exclude the GI causes of chest pain,

1:10.3

the most important of those being esophageal rupture,

1:13.9

there are only six remaining cardiopulmonary causes of chest pain that you need to know,

1:20.2

because they are life-threatening.

1:22.5

These are the six can't miss diagnoses.

1:26.1

There's two cardiac causes, acute coronary syndrome and paracarditis.

1:32.1

There's two pulmonary causes, pneumonia and pneumothorax. And then there's two vascular causes,

1:40.8

pulmonary embolism and aortic dissection. And a disclaimer, before we get started, I'm not going to be

1:47.1

going through O PQRST and telling you to get a thorough medical history and listen to the patient's

1:53.8

heart and their lungs. I'm not going to be doing any of that in this episode. We are instead going to be

1:59.1

doing a five-step approach specifically for chest

2:03.1

pain. These are the five specific things for chest pain that you need to do on every chest pain

...

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