Heart pain with osteochondrosis

Osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine does not manifest itself as often as osteochondrosis in other departments, but it is just as rejuvenated as other types of this disease. To date, it is diagnosed as early as in 20-year-olds, which is associated with both lifestyle and diet.

Thoracic osteochondrosis is the least common form of pathology, but the most dangerous of all types of osteochondrosis. The symptoms of thoracic osteochondrosis are so atypical that they can be attributed to other diseases, such as myocardial infarction or angina pectoris.

The disease really poses a threat, because after a while, if there is no proper treatment, osteochondrosis can cause the heart to malfunction, and the line between these conditions is very thin.

Symptoms of osteochondrosis

The thoracic spine is less mobile due to its anatomical features. For this reason, it is less loaded and therefore osteochondrosis appears much less frequently here. When the first pathological changes appear in the thoracic region, patients do not feel any signs of the disease for a long time, as it develops slowly.

Symptoms of osteochondrosis depend on the stage of development of the disease and are entirely related to it. At an early stage, the symptoms are less pronounced, while late osteochondrosis causes severe signs, for example, a feeling of pain in the heart, increased heart rate. Manifestations of the disease are as follows:

• in the first degree of development of the disease, discomfort occurs in osteochondrosis due to a violation of the integrity of the intervertebral disc. The rupture can be caused by a sharp, clumsy movement or by a large load in the region of the thoracic vertebrae. At these moments, patients suffer from increased sensitivity in this area of the spine, they experience severe pain and muscle tension. Patients note that the sensations are comparable to an electrical discharge passed through the back;
• the second degree of the disease is characterized by the protrusion of the intervertebral discs, which protrude up to a distance of 5 mm. The spine becomes unstable, diagnosis requires a thorough analysis of the patient's health, as patients constantly complain of discomfort and pain behind the chest, muscle tension, which can be a symptom of various pathologies;
• the third degree of thoracic osteochondrosis has more significant manifestations: pain is becoming more frequent, patients suffer from breathing problems (sudden shortness of breath, feeling of lack of air), they experience headaches and there are disruptions in the heart with osteochondrosis .

Important!The fourth stage of the disease for the patient is the most dangerous. Here, osteophytes appear on the surface of the vertebrae, which compress the spinal cord and nerve endings.

At various stages of the disease, patients are haunted by the following symptoms of pathology:

• intercostal neuralgia - a feeling of sharp pain in the sternum. At first, the point of pain may only be in one place, but after a while the pain completely covers the human chest. It becomes difficult for patients to breathe, change the position of the body. If you try to bend over, move or get up from one place, the painful sensations increase significantly;
• muscle spasms: the pain in the back muscles is quite strong and the pain spreads to the lower back, can also radiate to the abdomen and shoulders. The spasms are of a reflex nature, eg. they themselves do not respond to pain, but respond to spastic contractions of other muscles;
• a feeling of pre-arising discomfort: it can have a different strength and manifest itself long before exacerbation. Unpleasant sensations haunt patients for several days or even several weeks before the manifestation of more severe signs of osteochondrosis. Usually, the discomfort appears exclusively in the back and breastbone and may disappear or worsen again;
• with osteochondrosis, the symptoms of the pathology are usually more pronounced at night. In the morning the patient feels satisfactory, although in the cold season or with sudden movements osteochondrosis reappears.

Atypical symptoms

Chondrosis is insidious in that its symptoms may not resemble back pain at all. And sometimes patients do not even suspect that the problem of ailments lies precisely in the spine: they drink pain relievers or heart medications, which have absolutely nothing to do with the cause of the pain.

With multiple symptoms, it is necessary to contact the clinic for professional advice from a doctor - only after a comprehensive examination can osteochondrosis or heart pathology be detected

To suspect osteochondrosis, it is necessary to know what manifestations may indicate the disease:

• the onset of pain in the region of the heart, more similar to the symptoms of angina pectoris or even myocardial infarction. Such colic can last for weeks, and the drugs used to expand the coronary vessels do not have a positive effect on the situation at all;
• an exacerbation of the disease can cause pain in the mammary glands and traction sensations in women, such as during pregnancy. Therefore, when such sensations appear, it is necessary to consult a mammologist;
• spastic pains in the upper abdomen, which some patients consider to be symptoms of gastritis, cholecystitis or pancreatitis. The pain usually worsens with increased physical activity. Such signs of pathology can seriously impair the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract;
• problems with the functioning of the bladder and genital organs;
• pain in the pharynx and esophagus, foreign body sensation and pain when swallowing.

With osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine, Dorsago syndrome occurs, which is characterized by the onset of very intense pain in the sternum that occurs when rising from certain positions - sitting or lying down. The unpleasant sensations behind the sternum are so strong that it becomes difficult for patients to breathe, there is muscle stiffness, pain when turning the neck, in the lower back.

Back pain develops slowly. At the initial stage, discomfort occurs only with active movements, and after a while it is felt constantly. At the height of the disease, even a deep breath can cause painful back pain.

Signs of pain in the heart

Patients often confuse heart pain with manifestations of osteochondrosis, and this is not surprising, because with vertebral disease, the discomfort in the sternum is so strong that patients, with a sense of fear, suspect the worst - heart problems. To distinguish heart pain from osteochondrosis, you need to know the main characteristics of heart pain:

• localization: the correct definition of localization will allow to partially dispel doubts about chondrosis. Heart pain occurs mainly behind the breastbone or is localized in the left half of the breastbone. It radiates between the shoulder blades, can give way to the lower jaw, makes itself felt in the left hand;
• characteristic of pain: heart pain is distinguished by enviable constancy, is of a compressive, pressing nature, bakes behind the sternum, and due to the acute nature of its occurrence, such pain was called "dagger";
• provoking factors - usually pain in the heart has a clear factor, under the influence of which the pressure increases and discomfort occurs. It can be both a physical activity and an emotional stressor, stress. At rest, when a person is relaxed and not nervous, pain usually does not occur in the heart region, but even with minimal load that caused a narrowing of the vessel, angina pectoris develops;
• the time factor - heart pain does not last long, you can always determine its beginning and end. As a rule, an attack of angina pectoris is incorporated within minutes. The heart does not sting in advance, does not hurt and does not pull. Usually, it is the period of previous discomfort that makes it possible to distinguish osteochondrosis from true heart pain, the duration of an attack of which is limited mainly to 15-20 minutes;
• the nature of the cessation of chest pain is an important factor that doctors also take into account when differentiating osteochondrosis from heart disease. Usually, a heart attack is pumped quickly, while the patient must stop the provoking factor: stop exercising or calm down in the presence of stress. You can take a nitroglycerin tablet, which in most cases helps to eliminate discomfort and even completely stop the pain in a couple of minutes. With myocardial infarction, nitroglycerin does not cope with pain, and patients need emergency help.

Advise!These features are typical of heart pain, however, angina pectoris can also cause shortness of breath, giving stomach pain. Therefore, the symptoms that have arisen need to be analyzed in a complex way, taking into account the relationship and focusing on cardiac manifestations.

Problems with diagnosing heart pathologies can not always be solved by patients who do not have at least a general idea of how true heart pain occurs and what discomfort with osteochondrosis looks like, so doctors advise in a critical situation do not delay the manifestations of pathology and always call an ambulance ".

Osteochondrosis as a cause of heart pain

Pain behind the breastbone can be a manifestation of purely osteochondrosis, true heart pain, but don't lose sight of what osteochondrosis affects the heart in and of itself. Doctors have long talked about the connection of this disease with heart pain, but now there are scientific studies confirming the mechanism of the onset of heart pain, the etiology of which are problems of the musculoskeletal system, namely osteochondrosis of the thoracic region.

There are nerve connections between the spine and the heart that affect the work of the heart and cause malfunctions in the organ. The stellate ganglion actively participates in the innervation of the heart, from which the vertebral nerve departs - part of the sympathetic plexus of the artery of the spinal column.

The sympathetic plexus indirectly affects the brain stem and cortex. Therefore, in osteochondrosis, nerve connections can result in a variety of cardiac pain syndromes, metabolic consequences that affect the contractility of the heart muscle and the onset of arrhythmias.

Few people know that both diseases develop already at the age of 40-50, and a late diagnosis leads to combined symptoms, which provoke errors.

The difficulties in diagnosis are that patients suffering from osteochondrosis acquire the disease at the age of over forty to fifty years and already at this age the first heart ailments begin to appear. Therefore, the diagnosis of osteochondrosis and coronary heart disease leads to frequent errors - it is difficult to determine the etiology of pain. This occurs for the following reasons:

• insufficient diagnosis of the cause of heart pain;
• limited knowledge of cardiologists about whether the heart can hurt with osteochondrosis;
• re-evaluation of the results of the ECG, according to which the patient is almost immediately labeled with one or another diagnosis;
• the absence of an x-ray, which shows a pronounced sign of osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine.

Moreover, during the diagnosis, the nature of the projection pains, their localization and the sensations of the patients are not always taken into account. Therefore, such deficiencies in diagnosis lead to the fact that about 80% of patients with osteochondrosis on initial examination receive an incorrect diagnosis - coronary heart disease. An ECG with a high peak T wave also confirms this diagnosis, but doctors, unsure of whether the heart or osteochondrosis, prefer the former.

Only with further examination and X-rays it is possible to establish that heart pain with osteochondrosis is neurodystrophic and not ischemic in nature. It was she who influenced cardialgia, provoking characteristic manifestations and, as a result, errors in the diagnosis. Studies also note that heart pain occurs more often in those patients who already have organ pathologies, especially atherosclerotic changes in the vessels.

Important!The main threat in diagnosing such pain is the relationship between the coronary and non-coronary component as a cause of discomfort behind the breastbone. This facet, which is the effect of osteochondrosis on the heart, is extremely difficult to detect.

There have been studies that observed a patient with coronary insufficiency, a severe angiotic condition, who did not develop myocardial infarction within a week of cardiospasm, although the ECG data was quite threatening. However, the degree of severity spoke more in favor of the non-coronary component.

The main role of the doctor in this case is to correctly diagnose the disease, assess the patient's state of health, especially the indicators of the work of the heart and predict possible threats to the patient's life, because with a connected genesis - coronary and non-coronary: it is extremely difficult to identify the proportion of each. According to statistics, patients in one hundred percent of cases come to the clinic for urgent care precisely with a diagnosis of a pre-infarct condition or myocardial infarction.

Elimination of pain

After the causes are clarified and the diagnosis is made, the doctor will prescribe treatment: a detailed treatment regimen will help the patient to control pain and prevent the development of complications. Therapy includes drugs, physiotherapeutic methods of treatment, homeopathy. The main methods of therapy are:

• bed rest is recommended until pain is completely gone;
• to eliminate heart pain, it is necessary to take analgesics, antispasmodics, patients will be recommended steroid or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs when osteochondrosis is detected, but they should not be abused due to their adverse effects on the gastrointestinal tract;
• in addition to drugs for oral use, you can use various anesthetic creams, gels, oils. Effective remedies with safe components are medicines based on bee venom, turpentine, tea tree oil;
• to activate blood circulation nootropic drugs, chondroprotectors, vasodilators and diuretics will be useful;
• a very good effect on the body of a sick person will be the passage of a course of physiotherapy. The prescribed methods will help to cope with both manifestations of osteochondrosis and strengthen the body with heart pain;
• acupressure in the spine with a specific focus on damaged tissues will help to cope with back pain, muscle stiffness. All areas prone to spasms are relaxed, pain is eliminated. At the same time, acupressure will help correct posture;
• in the subacute period physiotherapy exercises are allowed, aimed at strengthening the muscles in projection to the thoracic spine. You can visit the pool, do a special fitness training;
• the diet will help get rid of pain: the doctor will separately recommend products for the pathology of the musculoskeletal system, as well as correct the nutrition of the nuclei, enriching it with substances necessary for the normal functioning of the heart muscle. Traditionally, for all patients, it is necessary to pay attention to the use of fatty, sweet, salty, if necessary it is necessary to reduce excess weight.

The most important

Osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine refers to degenerative-dystrophic lesions of the cartilage tissue, as a result of which a person experiences severe pain and discomfort. The disease develops mainly in patients over the age of forty, its appearance is affected by joint pathologies, traumatic injuries, hereditary factors, stress, metabolic disorders, imperfect working conditions, hormonal disorders. Osteochondrosis itself can cause pain similar to heart pain and also indirectly affect the development of heart pathology.

To differentiate the pathology, a special diagnostic test is performed - novocaine blockade of the star node, which helps to find out the patient's diagnosis and correctly assess her condition. In addition, it is also worth considering the irradiation of pain, the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of heart drugs, the presence of changes in the ECG made at different times.

Treatment is prescribed based on the cause of the disease, which can be recognized after a thorough examination. Cardiac medications are recommended for the treatment of coronary artery disease, while osteochondrosis can be treated with NSAIDs, steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, chondroprotectors, and in some cases surgery is required.