Tag: electrocardiogram

Were your 12-lead ECG electrodes placed where they should be?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

If you’ve had as many 12-lead ECG tests as I’ve had done over the years since my heart attack, you too may marvel at how swiftly the nurse or paramedic or Stress Test Clinic tech can slap those sticky electrode patches onto your chest, arms and legs.  Having observed many people slapping patches on me, I often wonder:  how do they know if they’re attaching those electrocardiogram patches onto the right anatomical places?       .  

Continue reading “Were your 12-lead ECG electrodes placed where they should be?” →

When your “significant EKG changes” are missed

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 25 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

A new cardiac study out of Montréal tells us yet again what women heart patients have already known for years: women receive poorer care during a heart attack than our male counterparts do. Quelle surprise . . .  But one specific finding caught my eye: one of the cardiac procedures that these researchers compared in this study was the use of the diagnostic electrocardiogram test (ECG or EKG) in male and female heart attack patients.(1)

They found that women were less likely than men to receive an electrocardiogram within the recommended 10 minutes of arriving in hospital with suspected cardiac symptoms.

It turns out, however, that even when we do finally get hooked up to a 12-lead EKG in a hospital’s Emergency Department, the doctors there may not be able to correctly interpret the “significant EKG changes” that identify heart disease. Continue reading “When your “significant EKG changes” are missed” →