SURVEY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHYSIOLOGICAL PARAMETERS AND CHEST PAIN IN PATIENTS WITH UNSTABLE ANGINA

Background and Objectives: Chest pain is the most common symptom among patients with unstable angina hospitalized in cardiac intensive care unit that can impact on patients' physiologic symptoms. In order to determine the exact relationship, this study aimed to determine the relationship between physiological parameters and chest pain in patients with unstable angina. Methods: In this cross-sectional study which was conducted in 2015-2016 in Golestan Hospital of Ahvaz, 80 CCU patients were studied during three months with random sampling method. Pain and physiological parameters was measured and recorded for each patient during two days at the time of chest pain. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 21 software. Mann-Whitney test was used for gender and marital status, Kruskal-Wallis test for education and origin and for assessing the relationship between systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse, respiration, temperature, and oxygen saturation of arterial blood Spearman nonparametric rank correlation coefficient. In this study, the relationship between the severity of chest pain and physiological parameters in p atients with unstable angina was investigated. Results: The mean and standard deviation of patients' chest pain in this study was 4.41±1.31. The results of Spearman correlation coefficient (Spearman's rank correlation test) showed that a significant relationship exists between pain intensity and mean arterial blood oxygen saturation (95.42±1.48). Pain intensity was inversely related to oxygen saturation of arterial blood (P =. / 021, r =. / 257). But no significant relationship was obtained between the pain and systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse, respiration and temperature. (Significant level. /05 ˂P). Conclusion: This study showed that pain intensity is significantly associated with arterial blood oxygen saturation. It seems that we can use the arterial blood oxygen saturation as a way to measure patients' pain. But since no relationship between other physiological parameters was found further studies with larger sample size are needed to be conducted. Keywords: Unstable angina, chest pain, physiological parameters