Pressure In Chest - Could It Be Blood Pooling

[lgtaylor100]

Hi everyone -

When I lie down I get a strange pressure feeling in my chest, more on the left side. It feels like a swelling and tightness. Could it be blood pooling in my heart?

I have POTS and my blood pressure tends to drop 20 points when I stand for 10 minutes or longer and my heart rate increases by at least 30 pts. I have been diagnosed with a TTT but I am having trouble getting an answer from doctors about this strange feeling in my chest. I have had an echo and a stress test and everything seems to be okay.

Any ideas?

Lynne

[Friedbrain]

Your symptoms don't sound *exactly* like mine, but I'll throw this in anyway fwiw. I have pain in my chest periodically upon lying down. After researching, I became concerned that maybe it was blood pooling (I, too, have had bouts of postural hypotension, and have generallly low blood pressure all the time), too. It happened at night, was like a tightness in my chest, hurt, and lasted sometimes for hours (tho not always). I think that's what finally convinced me to go get the Holter from the cardio done.

"Luckily" I had some of those chest pain bouts while I had the holter monitor on-nothing showed up as abnormal on the readout so the cardio didn't think it was heart-related. Soon after that, I had another nocturnal episode and I realized that it also hurt to swallow saliva. Ie, I would swallow and a few seconds later, it would hurt REALLY bad. But then I had two nights of that pain, and one of those evenings, my dinner got stuck in my esophagus. I noticed I was also burping up air, and wondered if it was actually a swallowing thing. When my head first fell apart many years ago, one of the neurological problems I had was swallowing (altho it was at a different step of the process-transitioning in the back of my throat). So I went to the FP, who ordered a full battery of tests cuz I was having so much nocturnal pain those few nights, in case there was a tear in my esophagus etc. Nope. So she sent me to a GI.....who said it could be a problem in any numerous parts of the GI tract. Let's just say things were coming out ok, so I wasn't so concerned about the lower GI. I was scheduled to have my upper GI scoped, but since it involved putting me out (which I was nervous about, since I have a seizure disorder, react poorly to epinephrine, and have overall unstable head) and since I was ta-da feeling better, I cancelled.

Long story short....for ME, chest pain is periodic and I'm thinking is more likely GI (esophagus/swallowing) than cardiac; and I think it's probably related to my neurological problems that are cyclical based on hormones (I'm now trying to find a pattern to the chest pain occurrences); which ultimately may be related to dysautonomia, I don't know.

Anyway, just .02.

[HopeSprings]

I have that sensation also. Not sure what causes it.