Our body generally is not very smart when it comes to pain referred to the front. A lot of things can cause chest pain.
For example, the most worrying to people is whether its a cardiac event or just chest pain but naturally a lot of pain can be referred to the front, for example, musculoskeletal pain, referred pain from a spine condition, or even pain from infection.
For example, I remember a patient complained about chest pain and nobody opened up the clothes to look at the patient's chest wall, who was having shingles, so having pain on the chest wall resulted from that.
Other things would be gastric. Your GI tract can have referred pain, reflux, having a bit of lung infection can also cause this, taking a deep breath sometimes you can have a bit of pain, even things like the diaphragm irritation when you breathe you can have pain around the lower chest area, hepatitis, or liver inflammation.
What kind of doctor should I see then?
So, if you have pain in the front of the chest, naturally you can see the cardiologist first, then we will decide whether this pain is truly a cardiac cause. Of course, there all those causes I've mentioned are possible. But the thing most people are alarmed about is the heart because these things can kill you quite fast. Once we have ruled out cardiac components we will decide who is the next relevant person to go to.
