None of us can give you medical advice, but chest/rib pain is something that some people with BD suffer from. The reasons can vary and I'm not a lover of Wikipedia, but I have seen this mentioned by BD sufferers. It may be of interest to you.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costo...
If you are in the UK and you haven't been to a Centre of Excellence or seen a recommended BD Specialist, it may be worth doing that. Clearly there is something else going on besides Crohns and a BD Specialist should be able to tell you if your boyfriend has BD. If you haven't seen this already, you may find the Society's diagnostic guidelines helpful. www.behcets.org.uk/menus/ma...
Your boyfriend has a confirmed diagnosis of crohns, but interestingly BD patients get similar symptoms. www.behcets.org.uk/Document...

Thanks so much for the advice! I'll mention Costochondritis when we're next at the doctors, we have to go in for the next lot of remicade this week. My boyfriend is Greek and we're living here at the moment so unfortunately visiting a Centre of Excellence is out of the question at the moment... but hopefully in the future as we have some plans to come back to the uk for a while.... I had looked at the guidelines from Behcets.org when my BF was diagnosed with crohns, 1 doctor had mentioned the disease during tests so of course the 1st thing we did was read everything about Behcets on the internet.. He has alot of symptoms from Behcet's....headaches, photophobia, tiredness, inflammation in the intestines, thrombosis, mouth ulcers, uveitis, tendenitis, stiff neck, pain in his joints and this chest pain but the doctors here still say that these are symptoms of Crohns too... unfortunately they are not so common symptoms of crohns and seem to be more common symptoms of Behcets... Our doctor here has said that we shouldn't worry too much about diagnosis, as the treatment is the same, he said all we should do is pray that whichever it turns out to be, that it is light....

Hi, I get chest pain and have had the treatment for a pulmonary embolism and the bloods for a heart attack. These have not been the case. I get the pains from the high dose steroids when I have the three days of IV methlypred. It is the reflux associated with the drugs. I usually take somac 40mg twice a day but sometimes in hospital i have a somac infusion for 3 -5 days and that feels much better.

This is only my experience and the advice from tigerfeet is much more valid but do make sure you are on an acid suppressing medication as well as all the others.

Hope this adds something to help
Felicity

Hi Felicity, thanks for getting back to me.... I'm sorry to hear that you have so much trouble with the acid, my boyfriend does have the occasional problem too, but the pain he has is more in his bones.... the information from TF seems very close so I'm going to mention it to the doctor next time we go...

I hope you're feeling well at the moment and thanks again for your response...

Take care
Nancy

Hi sweetie, glad you came online here for some reassurance if nothing else. We all sympathise with the never ending misdiagnosis problem... most of us have gone through something similar which can last years. I was over 7 years from first thoughts to final confirmation and that followed weird unexplained illnesses/pains all my life. I'm 54 and have been diagnosed over 10 years and my story is pretty typical of a lot of us BD bods.

Okay....sensible advice here. Of course the pain is real....we believe him !. However, no 2 people are the same and no-one on here would be willing or able to give you any diagnosis of what was causing it. We can't do that...but we can be supportive. Chest pain is ALWAYS a problem and one day they WILL find out what is causing it (or at least have a flipping good guess). I do get chest pain when I have problems with pulmonary congestion and other things going on in my lung area. I wonder at times if 'this is it..the final heart attack' and it subsides and I realise it is just another transient pain problem that goes along with BD. BD is not the only 'nasty' to have unknown pains and long diagnosis times so it really could be a whole range of odd syndromes/diseases that take a long time to show themselves fully. Please heed Tigerfeets advice and Read, Read and READ more about all the things that are available out there. The more you understand yourself, the more direct questions you can ask. Self help is everything.The frustration of not knowing is probably one of the worst things about getting something like BD and we all appreciate this so well. Feel free to talk..we're listening and someone will always come back to you in some way.

Could it be possible you could get your boyfriend to come online as well ?? Maybe this in itself might help him feel a little reassured ? Keep with the tests.....grit your teeth and hold his hand. If the pain gets too much seek immediate medical help....it just might be something that needs help straight away so don't assume it will just go away and dismiss it. They just may be able to give him something to help at that point in time and of course, you should always get it checked out if you're concerned immediately.You both need each other right now so much. Take care babes and keep in touch. Big hugs XX

I think keeping an accurate record of what is going on, and presenting that to a doc is the best thing. for example:
Is the chest pain to one side or the other?
Does it radiate to the back? Come on after food? Is it worse at night? Does it get worse or better with lying down, can he lie on both left and right sides or does one side make it worse? Does it get worse under stress?
Keep a diary, so you can mention it to the docs....something you think is not significant can be important to a doc making a diagnosis.

I have inflammatory bowel, and it is possible to get pain that high up into the chest....mine is brought on by fatty foods and pancreatitis, as well as problems with my sphincters but it could be stomach, duodenum, a hiatus hernia, back problems....loads of things and searching online you are unlikely to define it. He really should mention it to the gastro doc. Some of the investigations may have caused irritation or adhesions too.

You can also get some upset or ulceration to the stomach after steroid or other drug treatment.....or if he has inflammatory bowel, it could be a reaction to food....chest pain can also be due to problems elsewhere in the body and just be referred to the chest. There is a big junction of nerves there, the coeliac plexus and you can experience pain in the chest, that is actually just a nerve coming from another place (a bit like if you have sciatica and have foot pain, but actually the nerve is pinches in the spine much higher up....the body is odd like that).

Nobody can really tell you exactly what is going on on the forum, and if he is newly diagnosed, then he is at the stage where you notice every tiny thing and your brain searches for answers to try and solve a puzzle.....some years down the line, you sort of get used to not being a 'normal' case and just think ''hmmm weird unexplained pain again, oh well, that is what a diagnosis of Possible Behcet's Disease means!''. You still act on it, but it can be a lot less panicky and more matter of fact.

I had scans and all sorts of tests years ago for bad pain high in the chest radiating to the back and making it difficult to breathe in and out, often the tests were carried out months after I had reported an ''attack' and not co-inciding with the pain at all, which was useless and showed nothing. I did feel it was a gastric type thing from the vomiting and diarrhoea etc, and i did have abnormal blood tests but it took a long time to get an answer. My regret is that I did not keep more accurate information about time and frequency, diet and lifestyle...it might have helped.
Going online, checking stuff out with other BD sufferers can make a patient worry more and still have no clear answer.

It took years but eventually, in NZ, I got the pain and severe vomiting diarrhoea, went into A and E there in the middle of nowhere as I needed IV treatment and it was so severe.....and there was NOBODY in the waiting room or on the emergency ward....I was the only patient there and got painkillers and anti-emetics immediately, and I got an MRI and CAT scan immediately and because I was actually having the bad pain attack they could see that the pancreas was a bit large and inflamed.

They did scans daily, and the pancreas looked totally normal a few days later and by the time I was discharged....thus showing that tests cannot always catch anything at the exact moment it is dysfunctional, especially as in the UK your GP might request a scan for a pain today, and it can be days/weeks/months before you get it. I had had about 3 years of being treated like it was my fault or I had caused my internal problems or that the pain was imaginary up to that point, along with my boyfriend being accused of causing my illness so I am totally sympathetic to someone having had lots of tests and not really a unifying cause or answer for a lot of things. Where there is no distinct unifying diagnosis for all of the different symptoms, the docs can start to hint and speculate the psychology of the patient. That is why you need to keep an accurate diary of when and where things happen otherwise it can look like inconsistency and vagueness. I found that while I had the pain I could describe it, but when it went I could not really remember it (or want to remember it) but had a fear of it returning...and that did not help. I should have written it all down instead of sticking my head in the sand.

Remicade has side effects, but from my own experiences of it, I had a major problem with it and had to stop, It was when they were experimenting and it was unlicensed and given by drip in strong doses, but I found the side effects faded very quickly after treatment stopped.

The best thing for a patient to do is to probably just make a diary and collect information about their symptoms, to see if there is a pattern....but try not to obsess over it too (difficult I know). But only scientific or medical staff are going to be able to make a firm diagnosis as to the cause or possible outcome of symptoms so you need to help your partner by keeping accurate information about severity, frequency and type of symptoms and just keep supporting him when he goes to the docs, and remind him if he has forgotten to mention something, even if it is small (its easy to find you cannot speak to the doc when you get to an appt, you feel overwhelmed or just too sick and can allow it all to wash over you and miss an opportunity to ask questions)