Symptoms
Recognising symptoms that may herald cardiac conditions is often straightforward. No one would hesitate to seek medical advice for severe chest pain or following a blackout. However, significant symptoms are frequently overlooked as patients remain stoical, feel too busy to seek help or sometimes are afraid that they may face a serious diagnosis.
This section provides a brief guide to some of the symptoms that frequently signify a heart condition. The difficulty is that these symptoms are also related to lung, oesophageal, gastric, and sometimes neurological conditions. This makes a clinical history, physical examination and well directed investigations invaluable in determining the presence or absence of heart disease.