Most chest pain is not a heart attack. But when it is, every minute of delay costs heart muscle that never comes back. Knowing which is which is the single most useful thing a family can learn.
Call for an ambulance if the pain
- sits in the centre of the chest like heavy pressure, squeezing or a weight — not a sharp stab
- spreads to the left arm, both arms, the jaw, neck or back
- comes with cold sweating, nausea, vomiting or sudden breathlessness
- lasts more than 15–20 minutes, or comes and goes in waves
- starts during exertion and does not settle with rest
In people with diabetes and in older women, a heart attack often arrives without dramatic pain at all — only sudden breathlessness, extreme tiredness or fainting. Treat those the same way.
What is probably not cardiac
Pain that gets worse when you press the spot, changes with the position of your body, or is a brief sharp catch lasting a few seconds is usually muscular or from the rib joints. Burning behind the breastbone after a heavy meal, worse when lying flat, is usually acidity. These still deserve a doctor's opinion — just not an ambulance.
What to do while waiting
- Stop everything and sit down. Do not walk to the hospital and do not drive yourself.
- Call our emergency line and say the words "chest pain" — the desk will keep the line moving.
- If the patient is conscious, not allergic to aspirin and has no active bleeding, an ordinary aspirin chewed slowly helps. Do not give anything by mouth to someone drowsy or vomiting.
- Bring every previous prescription and report you can grab. Do not spend time looking for them.
What happens when you arrive
An ECG is taken within minutes and read straight away, with troponin and CK-MB from the same blood draw. If it is a heart attack, the artery has to be opened — and that is now possible in Cumilla. Our cardiac centre runs a cath lab and a coronary care unit, and our interventional cardiologists perform primary PCI, so a patient no longer has to be sent to Dhaka while the clock runs.
Patients who need close monitoring are admitted to the CCU. Those whose pain turns out to be non-cardiac are told so clearly, with the reason.
Emergency: +88 01335 529991 · Ambulance: +88 01819 012342
