Brief Answer:
Chest pain more deeper than muscle strain

Detailed Answer:
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While it is actually difficult for a patient to distinguish on its own the difference between the two types of pain, it is quite easy to make the difference. First of all, chest pain--due perhaps to angina or a heart attack-- which may feel like tightness, heavy pressure, squeezing, or crushing pain and more penetrating. The pain may spread to the arm, shoulder, jaw, or back where as muscle strain could be felt superficially, throbbing in nature, hardly spreads beyond the area where the muscle is strained and usually occurs mostly when a muscle is twitched or stretched.
Chest pain can be constant even without provocation even though in the actual fact chest pain is a vast symptom that could be caused by any of the several diseases from heart, lungs, ribs, vessels such as aorta etc. So each diseases that cause a chest pain, can present with its own characteristics, hence differentiation chest pain from muscle strain will need that all the causes of chest pain be brought out and analyzed individually. But as I said, the general difference is chest pain is felt more deeper than muscle strain.

Hope this helps and wish you the best
Dr. Nsah

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