Objective: Chest pain (CP) is a common complaint in children and adolescents. In most cases, it is a cause for anxiety in the patient and the family even though there is no organic cause. The aim of our study was to evaluate the epidemiological, clinical features and etiologic reasons of CP in children.

Material and Methods: Patients who presented to the pediatric cardiology outpatient clinic between January 2015 and March 2017 due to CP were included. Epidemiological factors such as age, sex and admission period and the clinical characteristics such as duration of pain, pattern, spread, accompanying symptoms, physical examination and laboratory findings were retrospectively analyzed.

Results: The mean age of the 570 patients with CP complaint was 11.6 ± 3.5 years. The smallest number of cases were in the age group smaller than 7 years (n: 48, 8%) and the largest in the age group of 7-12 years (n: 270, 47%) (p=0.01). There were more males than females but the difference was not significant (p=0.8). The most common causes of CP were idiopathic (n: 328, 58%) and musculoskeletal (n: 109, 19%). Cardiac causes (n: 45, 8%) were more common than in the literature and the two most frequent causes were MVP (n: 20, 44%) and rheumatic carditis (n: 7, 15%).

Conclusion: Cardiogenic CP is seen at a rate of 0-4% as the etiologic factor in children. The frequency of the causes can vary according to the center of the study. In our study, cardiogenic CP was detected at twice the rate expected. The fact that the cases are referred after the preliminary evaluation at different units may be the reason. In the literature, rheumatic carditis is rarely reported among the causes of cardiogenic CP, but it was the second most common reason of cardiogenic CP in our study. Among cardiogenic causes, rheumatic carditis should be remembered, especially in developing countries. Patients should be questioned in more detail to determine the psychogenic causes that may cause CP

Keywords: Child, Chest pain, Cardiogenic, Psychogenic, Rheumatic carditis