OT: 76 Year Old Father's Health Dilemma

[JoeParulz]

My 76 year old father has been having a health issue that doctors thus far have been unable to diagnose.

When he's laying down to sleep he will get a pressure sensation that starts in his stomach and begins to build pressure and radiate up to his chest. It grows more intense until his body breaks out into a sweat and then it completely passes. He will go weeks without episode then have them 3 nights in a row.

He's been treated by both a cardiac and a gastro doctor and neither seem to have any idea what is causing it.
The cardiac doctor has now completely cleared him and thinks its gastro. The gastro doc has done tests and tried several different medications and is still at a total loss for what his condition is. They even thought it could be a panic attack but he will have this happen sometimes as many as 10 times in one night so it's unlikely that is the culprit. To make matters worse he is beginning to suffer the early stages of dementia so he struggles at times to explain his condition to the doctors.

Any advice on what his next step should be? Try another gastro doc? See a different type of doctor? Any ideas?

 

[PSU65]

My 76 year old father has been having a health issue that doctors thus far have been unable to diagnose.

When he's laying down to sleep he will get a pressure sensation that starts in his stomach and begins to build pressure and radiate up to his chest. It grows more intense until his body breaks out into a sweat and then it completely passes. He will go weeks without episode then have them 3 nights in a row.

He's been treated by both a cardiac and a gastro doctor and neither seem to have any idea what is causing it.
The cardiac doctor has now completely cleared him and thinks its gastro. The gastro doc has done tests and tried several different medications and is still at a total loss for what his condition is. They even thought it could be a panic attack but he will have this happen sometimes as many as 10 times in one night so it's unlikely that is the culprit. To make matters worse he is beginning to suffer the early stages of dementia so he struggles at times to explain his condition to the doctors.

Any advice on what his next step should be? Try another gastro doc? See a different type of doctor? Any ideas?

I'm not a doctor but I'm old. Did the gastro doctor do an upper GI?

 

[Ranger Dan]

The unknown is always scary... I hope they find out what it is and that it's not anything serious. My advise would be to make sure that you are going to the right doctor, or multiple doctors. Maybe a teaching hospital would have more outside the box thinking...

 

[ralpieE]

The unknown is always scary... I hope they find out what it is and that it's not anything serious. My advise would be to make sure that you are going to the right doctor, or multiple doctors. Maybe a teaching hospital would have more outside the box thinking...

Gall bladder?

 

[michnittlion]

I've sort of had the same issues (chest pain that is sporadic --- often comes on from the middle of nowhere --- can get rather painful, especially with deeper breathing --- and also moves around from one side of my chest to the other) over the last several months.

I'm in the latter half of my 30s, so I'm not too old. I have been seen and cleared by both cardio and lung doctors.

The working diagnosis right now is costochondritis. See the link below. I take aspirin twice a day right now, it helps in knocking down the pain if/when it arises. The doctors advise it will likely go away within a year or so, but they don't think it's anything overly serious.

Hope this provides some perspective on another possible cause (this would be a benign cause).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costochondritis

 

[Split_T]

Gastric reflux

 

[PSU-Knocker]

Gall bladder?

That is a good suggestion. Before I had my gull bladder removed, I was having periodic upper torso pain. It seems strange that any Gastroenterologist would not test for that as common as it is and the test is not invasive nor all that expensive as medical test usually are. The doctor who removed mine said he removed about 100 per year.

 

[Cruising Route 66]

My 76 year old father has been having a health issue that doctors thus far have been unable to diagnose.

When he's laying down to sleep he will get a pressure sensation that starts in his stomach and begins to build pressure and radiate up to his chest. It grows more intense until his body breaks out into a sweat and then it completely passes. He will go weeks without episode then have them 3 nights in a row.

He's been treated by both a cardiac and a gastro doctor and neither seem to have any idea what is causing it.
The cardiac doctor has now completely cleared him and thinks its gastro. The gastro doc has done tests and tried several different medications and is still at a total loss for what his condition is. They even thought it could be a panic attack but he will have this happen sometimes as many as 10 times in one night so it's unlikely that is the culprit. To make matters worse he is beginning to suffer the early stages of dementia so he struggles at times to explain his condition to the doctors.

Any advice on what his next step should be? Try another gastro doc? See a different type of doctor? Any ideas?

Ask his primary care physician to write a script to get a PET scan. A PET scan can diagnose and determine the severity of or treat a variety of diseases, including many types of cancers, heart disease, gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders and other abnormalities. It's a nuclear test that can pinpoint molecular activity within the body and its organs and offers the potential for identifying any undiagnosed disease he might have.

 

[psu00]

Please talk to his docs and get a second opinion if you wish before you start taking advice from here on wild things like PET scans.

 

[ebervale]

From left field:

Consider getting tested for Lyme Disease??

 

[jj410]

I'm no doctor, so anything I might say will have been considered by a competent doc. Of course there can be many causes, especially if he can't describe the symptoms well and he may be missing some of them. The discomfort sounds much like a gall bladder problem but such usually begins mildly right after eating and a more severe night attack of gallstones is usually in upper right side and accompanied by nausea. Recurring heart problems usually have symptoms during the day as well as at night in the middle or left side.
But I wouldn't rule anything out or in until I got some better answers. Not all docs are created equal.
Do your research on mayo clinic.com or NIH.com to see if they have done the standard tests, if other tests are available, and the risk of such tests.
If I can't get any answers, I would seriously consider going to the emergency room the next time it happens so they can do some real-time tests and get an immediate opinion.
A heartburn-related problem is the easiest thing for a lay person to diagnose or rule out. Most people can recognize the burning sensation of heartburn but severe cases can be mistaken. Ask your docs if it's OK if he stands up and takes a couple tums as soon as it happens - if it's simple heartburn that should relieve it immediately, most other things, even very severe GERD, the tums won't help. (Long term use may make it worse.) You might also try taking his pulse and BP when it happens. Not eating several hours before he goes to bed and sleeping with head/chest a bit elevated might help if its GERD.
Good luck, this kind of stuff is nothing to fool around with.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chest-pain/basics/tests-diagnosis/con-20030540

 

[JoeParulz]

Thank you for the responses. He's been having these off and on for multiple years now. Since they started he had a pacemaker and a stent put in for unrelated problems. They didn't stop the attacks and the cardiac doc is now convinced his issues aren't cardiac.

He has other digestive problems so that likely is the issue. The attacks are very intense and he claims they aren't really painful but more "uncomfortable" but they end with him breaking out in a sweat. He gets very upset after he has one.

The difficulty with dealing someone there age is they like to complain but they aren't very good at listening to others advice. I brought up some of the suggestions from this thread and both of my parents have an excuse for blowing off each one. It can be frustrating.