Cardiovascular symptoms that may occur with common psychological disorders

  The common psychological disorder can present with cardiovascular symptoms such as panic, chest tightness, chest pain and elevated blood pressure, and the ECG can show ST depression, T depression or inversion similar to myocardial ischemia. Older people are easily misdiagnosed as coronary heart disease and heart failure, while younger people are easily misdiagnosed as myocarditis, or generally diagnosed as “cardiac neurosis”, and are not effectively treated.  When the heart panic appears, an electrocardiogram can reveal that the heart is beating too fast, or beating normally but with too much force, or a varying number of premature beats from the ventricles or atria. A premature beat is a beat of the heart that is released early. Patients are very sensitive to premature beats and can perceive each one when it occurs. What most patients perceive is not the early heartbeat, but the long gap that normally follows the premature beat, which the patient may perceive as “cardiac arrest” and may be accompanied by transient chest tightness.  In fact, there is no risk of such premature beats. The symptoms of panic are usually not related to activity and may even improve with appropriate activity. In response, many cardiovascular physicians prefer to treat this panic with beta-blockers such as betaloc, or antiarrhythmic drugs such as amiodarone, but the results are poor. It is also important to note that premature beats from the ventricles or atria caused by true organic heart disease are generally activity-related. Although there may be many premature beats, the patient often does not feel them.  The duration of chest tightness symptoms varies from a few minutes to less than 30 minutes in short cases, but most patients have a longer duration, ranging from several hours to several days. The vast majority of patients have chest tightness that is not related to exertion or body position. It is true that some patients have chest tightness that resembles symptoms of organic cardiovascular disease, i.e., the presence of exertion-induced chest tightness, chest tightness that worsens at night when falling asleep, or even sudden onset of shortness of breath during nighttime sleep, the latter two being seen mainly in patients with anxiety disorders, or depressive disorders with significant anxiety symptoms.  Among them, those with exertion-induced chest tightness, some patients whose symptoms are relieved quickly after rest, but most patients take a long time to relieve after rest, or return to the slight chest tightness before activity. Those whose chest tightness worsens at night when they fall asleep often take to sitting up to relieve chest tightness, much like the symptoms of organic cardiovascular disease and caused by left heart failure. Many patients are restless and agitated, and sitting up does not completely relieve the symptoms, and often require getting out of bed or going outside to relieve the symptoms of chest tightness.  Some patients with anxiety disorders, especially the sudden onset of shortness of breath during sleep at night, are more likely to resemble acute heart failure due to cardiac causes, but the cardiovascular physician’s examination does not reveal any evidence of heart failure. In these patients, treatment for heart failure is ineffective, or there is a varying degree of relief that does not subside, and the anxiolytic treatment quickly and completely subsides.  The site of chest pain is in the anterior chest region, often wandering irregularly, or in some patients, the site of chest pain is fixed, the duration is usually long, and it is not related to exertion, but has a clear correlation with emotion. In some patients with psychological disorders, the disease manifests itself as a sudden increase in blood pressure during an attack, and the blood pressure usually returns to normal automatically within 30-60 minutes, extremely similar to pheochromocytoma, which is common in cardiology.