"Mum, dad, my heart is stinging"

There is usually a lot of excitement - but we paediatricians can almost always quickly reassure parents and children. This is because there is almost never a serious illness behind this feeling, especially not a heart condition.

So what's going on? Our brain is simply structured in such a way that when we feel pain somewhere in the chest area, from a certain age and level of understanding, we simply associate it with: "Oh God, that's my heart!" And it usually gets worse because we become worried or even panic, tense up - and it stings all the more.

But you can say that in children who are otherwise healthy, who don't have a high temperature or a cough and are otherwise fit, it's never actually the heart. The stitching comes from the muscles or nerves - from some kind of tension or constriction in the musculoskeletal chest, but not from the heart.

This needs to be discussed calmly with the parents and the child. And if you enquire further, you will almost always get the information that the pain tends to occur when the child is at rest, when it is lying down or lounging around. However, if the child is exerting themselves and straining their cardiovascular system, the stinging hardly ever occurs. As soon as we receive confirmation of this from the parents - and after we have listened to the child and felt its pulse to be on the safe side - we can give the all-clear.

So: If your otherwise healthy child complains of pain in the heart from time to time, especially at rest, then you can actually be sure that this is actually pain from the chest and that your child does not have a heart condition.

If you are still unsure, you can of course have your child examined, but just keep this information in mind for reassurance.