Thank you dr. Boris. I have seen a lot of different doctors each with different answers. Some think it's GERD others think it chest wall pain and some think it's anxiety.
Dear Philip,
Because I am not able to evaluate you myself and I don’t have enough information about your chest pain, I am not able to tell you if this is a heart problem, or not. I can tell you that the majority of chest pain in children is not because of the heart, but is chest wall pain (muscles, bones, etc.). Frequently, we see shortness of breath with chest pain at rest when there is sharp chest pain that hurts worse when you breathe in. Adolescents report “shortness of breath” with this, but in reality, it is an avoidance of regular breathing because it hurts. When you avoid breathing, you feel short of breath. Typically, reassurance is all we usually need to give for this kind of pain. Ordinarily, we don’t recommend medications for brief pain, because by the time the medications start to work, the pain is long gone. Occasionally, if the pain is reproducible by pushing on the chest, we might use a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, like ibuprofen, for a week to reduce any inflammation that might be occurring. Usually, pediatric cardiologists like to get patients to 100% of predicted heart rate, not 85%, so the results of your stress test are not totally helpful for me, either. I do not know if you are physically active, or not, as this could be evidence of deconditioning, as well. Finally, the dizziness could be either from mild dehydration or hyperventilation. Overall, you need to see someone who can sort all of this out with you by history and examination.
I also forgot to mention my heart rate is about 100-120 during these episodes.