Chest Pain: The Only Symptom of Gastric Ulcer / General Medicine

A 51-year-old woman presented with a 3-month history of left-sided chest pain. The pain was colicky, without associated tenderness, and involved the T5-8 thoracic dermatomes. We suspected referred pain from peptic ulcer, and upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed multiple ulcers in the middle-third of the gastric lesser curvature. As the patient was on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) treatment for tension headaches, NSAID-induced peptic ulcer was diagnosed. Proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) treatment resulted in prompt pain relief. There are few reports of chest pain as the sole presenting symptom of peptic ulcer. Nevertheless, although rare, peptic ulcer should also be considered in the differential diagnosis of chest pain.

Questions Predicting Severe Disease in Patients with Abdominal Pain at a General Outpatient Department / General Medicine

<b>Background:</b> Taking a good history is important for the diagnosis of abdominal pain. We investigated questionnaire items that were significantly correlated with causes of abdominal pain requiring hospitalization. We also studied the combination of responses that could exclude severe disease.<br><b>Method:</b> Between February 2006 and December 2007, 296 of 317 patients with abdominal pain who attended our Outpatient Department completed a questionnaire for their abdominal pain. They included 32 patients requiring hospitalization (severe group) and 264 other patients (mild group). The percentage of positive responses to each questionnaire item was compared between the two groups, and those showing a significant difference were employed for logistic regression analysis.<br><b>Results:</b> The following 4 responses were selected: “It is less than 7 days since the onset of pain” (odds ratio [OR], 2.8; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.2-6.4); “The pain is exacerbated by walking” (OR, 2.8; 95% CI, 1.3-6.2); “The pain is accompanied by weight loss” (OR, 3.8; 95% CI, 1.5-9.8); and “The pain wakes me at night” (OR, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.1-5.2). If a patient had none of these responses, the predictive value was 0.03 for severe disease.<br><b>Conclusions:</b> Our findings suggested that pain reported within 7 days, exacerbation by walking, nocturnal awakening, and associated weight loss are features of abdominal pain that predict severe disease. Conversely, severe disease can be almost completely excluded in patients negative for all 4 features.