Angina
Pressing chest pain that appears when the heart receives less blood than it needs. It usually warns before a heart attack.
When to seek care
Call emergency services if pain appears at rest, lasts more than a few minutes, or is more intense than usual: that is no longer stable angina. Book a visit soon if pain appears with progressively less effort, or if it began showing up in situations where it did not before.
What it feels like
- Chest pressure when walking fast or climbing stairs
- Discomfort that eases on stopping or resting
- Triggered by cold, exertion, or intense emotion
Angina is the warning. A narrowed coronary artery can still meet the heart’s demand at rest, but not when the patient climbs stairs or walks into cold wind. That is when the pressure appears, and it eases on stopping.
That pattern - brought on by effort, relieved by rest - is what distinguishes it and what makes it testable with a stress test. The number that matters most in consultation is whether the threshold is falling: if pain used to appear after three blocks and now appears at the first, the picture is changing.
Once pain begins appearing at rest, it is no longer stable angina and is treated as an emergency.
Pain at rest is not this figure. That is an emergency: call emergency services.
The axis carries no scale: no minutes, no distances, no city blocks. All the diagram states is that with the same effort the discomfort begins sooner, and that can be checked on the drawing itself by comparing the two strips. It does not say how much effort it takes, nor from what point: that differs for every person.
- 01
- Appears on exertion
- 02
- Eases on stopping
- 03
- And the threshold drops: today it takes less effort