Heart pain with osteochondrosis

Osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine does not manifest as often as osteochondrosis in other departments, but it is as rejuvenated as other types of this disease. So far, it is diagnosed as early as 20 years old, 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 conditions, 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. Because of this, it is less loaded and therefore osteochondrosis appears much less often 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.

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

• in the first degree of development of the disease, discomfort in osteochondrosis occurs due to a violation of the integrity of the intervertebral disc. The rupture can be caused by a sudden, clumsy movement or a heavy load on the region of the thoracic vertebrae. At such times, patients suffer from increased sensitivity in this area of the spine, experience severe pain and muscle tension. Patients notice that the sensations are comparable to an electrical discharge passing 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, the 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 short of breath), they experience headaches and there are interruptions 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 the pathology:

• intercostal neuralgia - a sharp pain sensation in the sternum. At first, the point of onset of pain may be only in one place, but after a while the pain completely covers the human chest. It becomes difficult for patients to breathe, change body position. If you try to bend down, move or get up from one place, the painful sensations increase significantly;
• muscle spasms - pain in the muscles of the back is quite strong, and the pain spreads to the lower back, it can radiate to the abdomen and shoulders. The spasms are reflex in nature, that is, they themselves do not respond to pain, but respond to spastic contractions of other muscles;
• a pre-arising feeling of discomfort - it can have a different strength and manifest itself long before the exacerbation. Unpleasant sensations haunt patients for several days or even several weeks before more severe signs of osteochondrosis manifest. Usually, the discomfort appears only in the back and sternum and may disappear or get worse 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 as its symptoms may not resemble back pain. And sometimes patients do not even suspect that the problem of the disorders is precisely in the spine - they drink painkillers or heart medication, which have absolutely nothing to do with the cause of the pain.

With various symptoms, you need to contact the clinic to get professional advice from a doctor - only after a comprehensive examination, osteochondrosis or cardiac pathology can be detected

To suspect osteochondrosis, you need to know what manifestations may indicate the disease:

• the occurrence of pain in the region of the heart, more similar to the symptoms of angina pectoris or even myocardial infarction. This colic can last for weeks, and drugs used to expand the coronary vessels do not have a positive effect on the situation;
• an exacerbation of the disease can cause pain in the mammary glands and pulling sensations in women, such as during pregnancy. Therefore, when such sensations appear, it is necessary to consult a mammologist;
• spastic pain 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 affect the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract;
• problems with the functioning of the bladder and genitals;
• pain in the pharynx and esophagus, foreign body sensation and pain when swallowing.

With osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine, Dorsago's syndrome is manifested, characterized by the occurrence of very intense pain in the sternum that occurs when getting up from certain positions - sitting or lying down. 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 constantly felt. At the height of the disease, even a deep breath can cause painful back pain.

Signs of heart pain

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

• location - the correct definition of location will allow to partially dispel doubts about chondrosis. Heart pain mostly occurs behind the breastbone or is located in the left half of the breastbone. It radiates between the shoulder blades, can give to the lower jaw, is felt in the left hand;
• characteristic of pain - pain in the heart is distinguished by enviable constancy, it is compressive, pressing by nature, bakes behind the sternum, and due to the acute nature of its occurrence, this pain was called a "dagger";
• provoking factors - usually heart pain has a clear factor, under the influence of which the pressure increases and discomfort occurs. It can be both physical activity and a factor of emotional suffering, stress. At rest, when a person is relaxed and not nervous, there is usually no pain in the heart region, but even with a minimal load that has caused the vessel to narrow, angina pectoris develops;
• the time factor - heartache doesn't last long, you can always establish its beginning and end. As a rule, an attack of angina pectoris is incorporated within a few 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 which of an attack is mainly limited to 15-20 minutes;
• The nature of chest pain cessation is an important factor that clinicians also consider when differentiating osteochondrosis from heart disease. Typically, a heart attack is pumped quickly, while the patient has to 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 stops the pain in a few minutes. With myocardial infarction, nitroglycerin does not deal with the pain and patients need emergency help.

Addendum!These features are typical of heart pain, however, angina pectoris can also cause shortness of breath, causing stomach pain. Therefore, the symptoms that emerged must be analyzed in a complex way, taking into account the relationship and focusing on cardiac manifestations.

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

Osteochondrosis as a cause of heart pain

Pain behind the sternum can be a manifestation of pure osteochondrosis, true heart pain, but don't lose sight of what osteochondrosis affects the heart itself. Doctors have long talked about the connection of this disease with pain in the heart, but now there are scientific studies that confirm the mechanism of the occurrence of heart pain, the etiology of which is problems of the musculoskeletal system, that is, osteochondrosis of the thoracic region.

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

The sympathetic plexus indirectly affects the brainstem and cortex. Therefore, in osteochondrosis, nerve connections can provoke a variety of cardiac pain syndromes, metabolic consequences that affect cardiac muscle contractility and the occurrence of arrhythmias.

Few people know that both diseases develop as early as the age of 40 to 50 years, and late diagnosis leads to combined symptoms, which causes errors.

Difficulties in diagnosis are that patients suffering from osteochondrosis acquire the disease when they are over forty to fifty years old, and already at that age the first heart disorders 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;
• reassessment of ECG results, whereby 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.

In addition, during diagnosis, the nature of projection pains, their location and patients' sensations are not always taken into account. Therefore, such shortcomings in the diagnosis lead to the fact that about 80% of patients with osteochondrosis at the initial examination receive an incorrect diagnosis - coronary heart disease. Even a high peak T-wave ECG confirms this diagnosis, but doctors, not understanding whether heart or osteochondrosis, prefer the former.

Only with complementary exams and radiographs is it possible to establish that the pain in the heart with osteochondrosis is neurodystrophic and not ischemic in nature. It was she who influenced cardialgia, causing characteristic manifestations and, consequently, errors in diagnosis. Studies also note that heart pain occurs more frequently in those patients who already have organ pathologies, in particular, atherosclerotic changes in the vessels.

Important!The main threat in diagnosing this pain is the relationship of the coronary and non-coronary components as the cause of discomfort behind the sternum. This facet, which is the effect of osteochondrosis on the heart, is extremely difficult to single out.

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

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

pain elimination

Once the causes are clarified and the diagnosis is made, the doctor will prescribe treatment - a detailed treatment regimen will help the patient manage pain and prevent complications from developing. Therapy includes medicines, physiotherapeutic methods of treatment, homeopathy. The main methods of therapy are:

• bed rest is recommended until the pain has completely disappeared;
• to eliminate pain in the heart, it is necessary to take analgesics, antispasmodics, patients will be recommended steroidal or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs when osteochondrosis is detected, but they should not be abused due to 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 drugs based on bee venom, turpentine, tea tree oil;
• to activate blood circulation, nootropic drugs, chondroprotectors, vasodilators and diuretics will be useful;
• an excellent 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 the manifestations of osteochondrosis and strengthen the body with heart pain;
• Spinal acupressure with a specific focus on damaged tissues will help deal with back pain, muscle stiffness. All areas subject to spasms are relaxed, pain is eliminated. At the same time, acupressure will help correct posture;
• in the subacute period, physiotherapy exercises are allowed, aiming at strengthening the muscles in the projection to the thoracic spine. You can visit the swimming pool, do special physical training;
• the diet will help get rid of pain - the doctor will separately recommend products for the pathology of the musculoskeletal system, in addition to correcting the nutrition of the nuclei, enrich it with substances necessary for the normal functioning of the heart muscle. Traditionally, for all patients, you need to pay attention to the use of fatty, sweet, salty, if necessary, you need to reduce excess weight.

The most important

Osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine refers to degenerative-dystrophic lesions of the cartilaginous tissue, as a result of which a person experiences intense pain and discomfort. The disease develops mainly in patients over forty years of age, its appearance is influenced 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 cardiac pathology.

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

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