Panic attack

Introduction Panic attacks, also known as acute anxiety attacks. The patient suddenly has strong discomfort, and may have chest tightness, feeling of impotence, palpitations, sweating, stomach discomfort, tremors, numbness of hands and feet, feeling of death, feeling of madness or loss of control. Each episode lasts about a quarter of an hour. . There can be no obvious cause or no special situation. Still others are in certain special situations such as crowds, shops, public vehicles. It is characterized by repeated episodes of severe panic attacks with frequent sense of death or panic, as well as severe autonomic symptoms.

Cause

The patient suddenly has strong discomfort, and may have chest tightness, feeling of impotence, palpitations, sweating, stomach discomfort, tremors, numbness of hands and feet, feeling of death, feeling of madness or loss of control. Each episode lasts about a quarter of an hour. .

an examination

Related inspection

Brain CT examination of brain ultrasound

The typical performance is that when a patient is doing daily activities, such as reading a book, eating a meal, taking a walk, meeting, or doing housework, there is a sudden strong fear that seems to be dying. This tension makes the patient unbearable. At the same time, the patient feels guilty, as if the heart is going to jump out, chest tightness, pressure in the chest area or difficulty breathing, and the throat is clogged, as if it is suffocating, it will soon suffocate and die. Therefore, the patient will scream, call for help or run out of the house, hold the squirrels, and some may have excessive ventilating, dizziness, facial flushing, excessive sweating, gait instability, tremors, numbness of hands and feet, gastrointestinal discomfort and other autonomic symptoms, as well as exercise. Sexually disturbed. This kind of seizure, usually 5-20 minutes, is short, and can be relieved by itself. After the remission, the patient feels that everything is normal, but there may be a sudden recurrence soon.

Differential diagnosis

The main difficulty in differential diagnosis is to distinguish it from phobia. The differences between panic attacks and phobias are as follows:

(1) Anxiety fear of phobia is caused by exact objective things or situations. Although such objects or scenes are not dangerous, fears occur when patients see or face them, and panic attacks of anxiety It is not caused by an object or a situation, but occurs for no reason.

(2) The phobia patient takes evasive action on the object, and does not have fear from the corresponding object. The fear episode does not have a spontaneous nature, is conditional, and occurs only in the case of the object of fear. The panic attack does not evade the object, and the episode has nothing to do with the situation and is unpredictable.

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