Panic, chest tightness, shortness of breath Why see a psychiatrist?

Almost every day at work, we can receive cardiovascular medicine or emergency department consultation orders, these patients are basically because of repeated panic chest tightness chest pain hospitalization, a lot or young people. The main performance is no reason to suddenly heartbeat is very fast, chest is very tight, feel breathless, have a kind of suffocation feeling, each time lasts for ten minutes or half an hour automatically relieved, but it is not good to say when the hair again, some times a day hair more than 10 times. These patients usually call 120 to the emergency room, the examination is basically no problem, the young went home, the older will be transferred to the cardiovascular medicine department to continue examination. But the electrocardiogram, cardiac ultrasound, coronary angiogram, and pulmonary CT are all normal, meaning that the heart and lungs are functioning normally. At the same time taking medication to improve the heart, there was no effect. In the past, many emergency department and cardiovascular physicians did not know enough about this, and basically gave the patient the answer of “no disease”, but the patient still had seizures when he went home, so he repeatedly went to the emergency room and the cardiology department, and because he was worried about not checking in that place, he checked his whole body all over again, but still could not find out the problem, and the doctor was at his wits’ end. But the patient’s problem is not solved, and he or she is still upset, so much so that he or she is worried about when he or she will have an attack, and he or she is always carrying special heart pills in his or her pocket, and he or she is afraid to go out, and he or she needs to have someone with him or her in the house, and he or she is scared all day long. So what kind of problem is this? In fact, this is called panic disorder, a kind of acute anxiety attack when the vegetative nerve dysfunction, feeling and myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, asthma is very similar to the very difficult, but in fact there is no organic problem, will not be life-threatening. Diagnosis of the disease is usually made with more than 3 episodes per month. Many internists are now knowledgeable about this and will usually recommend a visit to a psychiatrist or psychologist if multiple episodes are seen. The problem now is that many people do not think they are caused by anxiety, and often hear patients say, “I have nothing to be anxious about, how is it anxiety? How can I be anxious? How can I be said to have a psychological problem when I’m having such a hard time? I can not understand, certainly did not check my disease clearly,” so another hospital to see, if you can not find out, and then go to Beijing, Shanghai or abroad to see, but the final conclusion is the same. We see patients in the clinic are basically holding a stack of checklists, a large bag of drugs, a number of hospital medical records. So how to relieve this sad feeling? How do you keep it from flaring up? Since the diagnosis makes it clear that it is a form of acute anxiety, the treatment is of course anti-anxiety therapy. At first, it is usually treated with Clonidine or Valium IV and relieved, basically no more than a week to stop. Prevention of long-term non-emergence need to take long-term anti-anxiety drugs such as paroxetine, escitalopram, etc., taking drugs for 2-4 weeks most of the time will not send, depending on each person’s situation need to consolidate and maintain the drug for about half a year to 1 year, some may be longer, depending on the person.