[Acute precordial pain: 100 cases in 3 years].

OBJECTIVE

To find the effectiveness of diagnoses of acute precordial pain seen as an emergency at our centre.

DESIGN

Observational, descriptive and retrospective study.

SETTING

Urban primary care centre.

PATIENTS: The 100 most recent patients who attended as an emergency with their first episode of acute precordial pain were included.

STUDY PERIOD: December 1994 to March 1998. Home visits, patients without medical records and those seen on repeated attendance for precordialgia were excluded.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN

RESULTS

The emergency diagnosis and the diagnosis recorded afterwards in the clinical history of 100 people with acute precordialgia, aged 54.9 (16.7 years; 56% [n = 56] women), were gathered. Ischaemic cardiopathy (41%, n = 41) and mechanical precordialgia (36%, n = 36) were the most common initial diagnoses. We found 66.6% sensitivity and 81.4% specificity in the detection of ischaemic cardiopathy. The proportion of diagnostic errors was not linked to the pathological history of anxiety, ischaemic cardiopathy or oesophageal disease.

CONCLUSIONS

41% of precordialgias are diagnosed as presumably ischaemic and are potentially serious, although only 50% of them are confirmed as such. Our sensitivity in their diagnosis is comparable to that of other studies.