Chest Pain

[Montana94]

I have been having horrible chest pain for four years now and it feels like knives stabbing into my chest. At first it was only on my left side and would last a couple of seconds to an hour. Now it has obviously gotten much worse at will last up to two days at a time, and ocassionally on my right side as well. When this happens I generally have a pain that is also in my left shoulder - same feeling just like a knife stabbing me. I have been to doctors upon doctors and no one seems to be able to diagonse this. I am at a young age still in my late teens and this is a very painful way to live. If  I try to take deep breathes it makes the pain worse, rearranging my body position doesn't help at all whether I lay on my back, side, or stomach. Sometimes there is also a lot of pressure on my chest as if someone is sitting on me.
Does anyone have any ideas or help?

[SammiJean]

I too experience chest pains. For years, I've had what I'd describe as angina. Even leaving my very expersive college classes to go to ER. My cardiologist says my heart is fine (except for the 10 yrs smoking), my PCP says the it might be gas bubbles causing the pain. I've had no answers that seem to help me rid myself of the pain though. I usually just have to shallow breathe for several minutes until it passes. Are you a smoker? And also, I've noticed that the more water I drink, the less frequent I have these horrible pains. I dunno what your actual diagnosis is, but I sympathize with you!

[Sullyfish]

Could it be possible that you are having anxiety attacks? Or maybe it's from stress? Sometimes people can manifest psychological (and physical) strain via physiological pain. I don't know what your opinion is about that, but perhaps you should consider this a possibility if medical professionals haven't found anything physically wrong. Hopefully this can get better. A friend of mine had crazy chest pain and tons of tests to make sure nothing was wrong with his heart or lungs, but nothing. He really chilled out and his pain stopped. I think stress was messing with his body. Anywho! That's my two cents.

[Gio77Italy]

Severe Anxiety can trigger a pre-existing heart problem.

Your symptoms are of a coronary artery disease which is uncommon in young people.

Are you overweight? Do you check your Blood Pressure often? Do you smoke? Do you do enough exercise?

What did the Doctors test you for? There are a few exams that you need to take, if you haven't go to see a Cardiologist:

routine blood tests
EKG
Cardiac stress test
Echocardiogram to find out if there's malformation in the heart.

If nothing comes up and the problem persists

Chest x-ray

Ultimately some more invasive tests:

Cardiac perfusion scan.
CT Angiogram.