Can angina be felt in your arm and jaw and not your chest or does the pain from your chest radiate to those places? I get off and on jaw pains and left arm/elbow pains. They come and go it can be while im just sitting here or it can be when im really stressed. I have seen a few cardiologist and had every test done besides a cath and they all showed my heart is fine.
Last edited by confused32; 07-12-2006 at 02:42 PM.
Hi,
Angina can certainly be felt in your arms and it does or can radiate to your body. In my arms it is not so much pain but more of an ache - much like arthritis. Aches and pains in the neck, jaw and back are not uncommon.
There are several forms of angina. Stable angina is stress- or exercise-induced but there are other forms that can strike at any time. Unstable angina, sometimes the precursor to a heart attack, is obviously more serious.
No doubt your cardiologist has checked this out.
Your age, weight, exercise regime and fitness, diet, family history, and whether or not you smoke, is a rough guide to your susceptibility group.
Of course it's not 100% and I would suggest keeping at it until it's resolved to your satisfaction.
A friend of mine never smoked or drank, exercised regularly, grew and ate his own vegies and kept very trim. He did not like doctors. He collapsed one day and that was it. He was taking cough syrup for his angina.
confused,
Since you've had all the tests but catheter angio and they all point away from angina, I'd trust them.
Chest or arm pains are not likely alone to point to angina in the absence of chest discomfort but it IS possible. If any of the pains is associated with shortness of breath, then angina is more likely.
I hink having a catheter/angiogram with your symptoms comes down on the wrong side of risk/benefit ratio.
I have mentioned this before but I think it is worth repeating. One, I had arm pain, often without chest pain, and cath revealed 85% to 90% blockage. I have had stress tests that were negative yet I was still blocked, up to 95%. In that last test (again without chest pain), the clue was the wave pattern was "not normal", so they went to a cath and saw the blockage.
While eveyone is different, and while doctors will quote statistics and group averages, my experience says that arm pain without chest pain, or stress tests without results does NOT NECESSARILY mean that coronary arteries are not blocked.
Also, with arm pain/chest pain, it is often useful to catalog additional symptoms if any that occur at the same time. The list is drawn from people's experiences and can include shortness of breath, nausea, cold sweats, possibly erratic pulse rate in addition to the pains. Not all have to be present at the same time.
