Chest pain is one of the most common presentations to the emergency department (ED) and includes a wide differential diagnosis. In today’s post, we will review a less common cause of chest pain seen in the ED: pericarditis and myocarditis. We will also review considerations for these disease processes as it pertains to COVID-19.

Let’s start with a case: Joe is a 30-year-old male who presents with five days of pleuritic chest pain that is worse while supine. He is otherwise healthy, does not take any medications or use any recreational substances.

There is a very broad differential diagnosis for Joe’s presentation, but let’s take a deeper dive into pericarditis, which is on the differential for this patient.

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