Urgent Care Clinic or Emergency Room? Chest Pain
Chest pain is one of the more concerning symptoms out there one could develop and chances are if you started experiencing chest pain that is unexplained or otherwise, your first thought would be to visit an emergency room to be checked out. This is maybe why, the gurus over at frontlineer.com argue, chest pain accounts for the lion share of visits to an emergency room every year according to the facts and figures available on the same. The fact that chest pain is usually associated with a heart attack is probably why people get panicky when they start to experience the same. However, it should be noted that chest pain doesn’t automatically translate to a heart attack, which is a medical emergency that should be taken seriously by visiting an emergency room when you exhibit its symptoms, and as such some cases involving chest pain can thus be handled at an urgent care clinic. This article should thus be of great help as it will look to highlight the cases that should be handled in an urgent care clinic and those that require a visit to an emergency room as far as chest pain is concerned.
First and foremost, let us take a look at those cases involving chest pain that may require medical attention but are not medical emergencies and as such can be handled at an urgent care clinic. One thing that should clear things up when it comes to heading to an urgent care clinic for chest pain is if you experience chest pain that you not only have experienced before, but it was diagnosed and was found to be no emergency. If you experience it again, you can head to an urgent care clinic to be assessed. Chest pain in young people, like those in their twenties is also not an emergency most of the time, especially if it goes way after sometime or if it was due to you having done some serious physical workout. The folks over at frontlineer.com also argue that chest pain that goes away when one changes their body position can also be comfortably handled in an urgent care clinic. Chet pain that are due to moderate asthma attacks can also be handled at an urgent care clinic, which has the capabilities to deal with minor to moderate asthma attacks. Heartburn and panic attacks can also cause chest pain and these too should be taken to an urgent care clinic and not an ER as they are not emergencies with the same applying to shingles.
On the flipside, if you start experiencing sudden, unexplained chest pain that you have never experienced before, you should visit an emergency room pronto as this may be a sign you are suffering from a heart attack. Speaking of heart attack, if the chest pain is accompanied by numbness, pain in the back, neck, jaw, arms as well as abdominal pain. Other symptoms include nausea dizziness and extreme body weakness. As explained in detail over at frontlineer.com, heart attacks should be attended to as soon as possible since the more time passes without medical attention, the more damage is done to the muscles of the heart. This is why it is important for those who have a personal or family history of heart attacks to head over to an emergency room as soon as they can when they start to experience chest pain. The aspect of age also applies in that those who are above the age of 55 should head over to an emergency room whenever they start to experience chest pain as they are among the group of people most at risk as far as heart attacks are concerned. The same applies to folks with high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes as well as those who smoke heavily; they also need to visit an emergency room as soon as they start getting chest pain.
The subject matter experts over at frontlineer.com are clear that one of the reasons why more serious cases of chest pain, those indicating a heart attack, should be handled at an emergency room and not an urgent care clinic is due to the facilities available at the former that are not at the latter. For instance, when it comes to diagnosis, an ER has facilities to perform an Electrocardiogram (ECG), which is used to determine if one is having a heart attack or not as well as blood testing for a heart attack. When it comes to treatment, facilities that allow for administering of blood thinners, nitroglycerin, oxygen, morphine to relive pain as well as clot-buster drugs such as tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) are also available; with all of this facilities lacking at an urgent care clinic.
Clearly, apart from the few cases mentioned above, cases of chest pain should always be treated as the medical emergencies they are and taken to an emergency room, especially given the implications of not taking them seriously, with a visit to frontlineer.com being the best option out there.
