As an accredited Chest Pain Center, Blessing has the experience and the technology to treat your chest pain immediately and effectively.

What to Know About Chest Pain

  • "Heart and Vascular"Heart attack symptom: Chest pain is the most common symptom of a heart attack. The pain often feels like a squeezing or tightening in your chest, which may spread to your arm, shoulder, jaw or back.

  • Symptom of other conditions: Other, less serious conditions may cause chest pain, including:

    • Lung problems, such as pneumonia

    • Muscle strains

    • Heartburn

    • Panic attacks

  • Heart attack or not? It can be difficult to tell the difference between heart attack pain and other pain. You should always err on the side of caution. Call 911 if you have:

    • Sudden pain or pressure in your chest that feels like crushing or squeezing

    • Pain that spreads, such as to your jaw, left arm or your shoulder blades

    • Shortness of breath, nausea or dizziness, sweating or a racing heart

    • Symptoms, along with a diagnosis of heart disease or angina

Experience the Blessing Difference: Care for Chest Pain

The emergency medicine and heart care teams treat all types of chest pain. We work efficiently, because every second matters when you are having a heart attack. We offer:

  • Rapid treatment: Our “door to balloon” time, or the time between a patient arriving and getting angioplasty, is well under the national guideline of 90 minutes. We are one of a handful of hospitals in Illinois and Missouri with additional accreditation for our ability to quickly perform life-saving angioplasty for people having a heart attack.

  • Chest Pain Center accreditation: This accreditation means that we have met stringent guidelines to treat people who need life-saving care for a heart attack. The doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers have specialized training in treating chest pain and are able to rapidly assess, diagnose and treat patients.

  • Careful monitoring: If we cannot immediately diagnose your chest pain in the Emergency Center, we may send you to the observation decision unit (ODU). The ODU is a step between emergency room care and being admitted to the hospital. We continue to monitor people with chest pain here and can treat or admit you if needed. Learn more about the ODU.

  • Team approach to care: The EMTs, paramedics and other first responders work closely with our emergency medicine team and heart care team to ensure continuity of care. We keep the patient in the center and follow specific protocols to get the best results for you.

Contact Us

If you suspect you are having a heart attack, call 911 immediately. For information about Blessing’s Emergency Center, call (217) 223-1200.