What are symptoms of angina?

Hi, I'm Dr Sukhneja. I'm an interventional cardiologist working in central London. One of the questions we often get asked are what are the symptoms of angina? Well, angina is a chest discomfort that's usually caused by narrowing of the heart arteries, but there are a number of other factors that can cause a symptom as well. Typically, it's a symptom that comes on during exertion. So the patient may well be under doing activity, maybe going for a walk, maybe being active, heading to work and they may will feel a central chest tightness. Now the words that people use can really vary and some people will describe it as a heaviness or a feeling of pressure. Some patients have referred to it as a hand being placed on the chest or feeling that someone is pushing them back and others have felt that maybe it's like a belt that's on too tight or a bra that's too tight. But there is often a feeling of constriction. Lots of patients tell us that it's not truly a pain, rather it's just an ache or an uneasy feeling. That feeling can often move up into the neck, into the jaw, through to the back and either arm as well. Whilst many of us have heard that heart symptoms typically go to the left arm, it can affect either of the arms and lots of people have mistaken symptoms as being not heart related just because it was moving to their right arm, so do watch out for that. These symptoms are typically occurring when the individual is working hard, and if the patient's on the right medications or has had treatment to their heart arteries before, then they may need to work very hard before those symptoms come on. The key thing is that when they stop doing their activity, those symptoms should go away. So stable angina is a sensation of chest tightness, and it may move around the body, up into the neck and into the arm, and it occurs on exertion but goes away when the individual rests.