An EKG is a electrocardiogram, which is a test done to the heart. The heart is a muscular pump that transports blood throughout the body. It is made up of four chambers, the upper ones are called atria and the bottom two chambers are called ventricles. The heart has the ability to pump due to a natural electrical system. An EKG is done to measure the electrical activity of a heartbeat. An EKG is done by a is performed in a doctor's office or a hospital. The patient will be dressed in a hospital gown, removing all jewelry and will then have to lay on a medical table where twelve to fifteen electrodes will be attached to their arms, legs and chest. Electrodes are little patches that are used to detected and conduct the electrical impulses. If there is hair …show more content…
During the test the patient is asked to remain still, shivering could distort the reading therefore you are to be warm while the test is in progress. The patient is able to breathe normally. The test shows a line tracing with spikes and valleys on a piece of paper. Those spikes and valleys are called waves. The creation of the waves are made by the upper chambers and lower chambers. The upper chambers make the first wave referred to as the “P wave” and the lower chambers make the second wave, which is referred to as “QRS complex”. Following this wave is the “T wave”, the final wave. This wave is the electrical recovery or return to the resting state for the ventricles. This test measures how long it takes an electrical wave to pass through the heart. It also tests if the electrical activity is normal, or too slow, or possibly to fast. EKG’s can even help find the cause of certain symptoms of heart disease. Such as shortness of breath, dizziness and palpitations. They also can determine if the walls of the heart are too thick. It can test whether medications are causing side effects to the heart. People with pacemakers get EKGs done to test how well the devices is
12 Lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) - There are typical changes to the normal pattern of the ECG in a heart attack. Patterns that occur include pathological Q waves and ST elevation (Koutoukidis, Stainton & Hughson 2013, p. 505). However, it is possible to have a normal ECG even if a patient has had a heart attack. The indicators for this test include: suspected myocardial infarction, suspected pulmonary embolism, perceived cardiac dysrhythmias, fainting or collapse, a third heart sound, fourth heart sound, a cardiac murmur or other findings to indicate structural heart disease. The
EMTs are such an essential part of society nowadays. In my opinion, this is one of the most important jobs out there. For just a moment, imagine that you are driving down the road on a rainy night and lose control of your car. You go flying off the road and into a tree on the side of the road. Everything goes fuzzy and all you can see are flashes of reality. You fade in and out, hearing sirens and seeing lights, but you have no control of your body. The next thing you know, you wake up inside of a small room, freaking out because you have no idea what has just happened. Eventually you realize that the small room you are in is the back of an ambulance, and you are being taken
African American male that is seen today for followup post hospital discharge. He is a 48-year-old gentleman with complicated cardiac history as well as neurological history including congestive heart failure. History of strokes 01/2017, possible sick sinus syndrome. He has an implanted pacemaker that was placed in 06/2017, as well as hypertension. He was taken to the Central Hospital on 09/01 with presentation of chest pain, noted to be around his pacemaker site. He identified being in seizure and suddenly felt chest pain with shortness of breath, and was offered nitro, he developed headaches and dyspnea post nitro treatment, of note is that the EKG that was obtained during that process, did not identify any pacemaker spike despite having a
Once the patient was correctly hooked up to the EKG the BIOPAC Student Lab Program was started. Lesson five is the one we used for this experiment and once it had been chosen we label it and started the experiment. There were four conditions we needed to measure; the first being lying down. The subject was lying down relaxing on the cot. We clicked record and let it run for 20 seconds. The data resembled the chart below. If it did not we would have had to repeat the steps until it did.
The EKG is read by a doctor or specialist, such as an internist, family medicine doctor, electrophysiologist, cardiologist, anesthesiologist, or surgeon. The doctor will look at the pattern of spikes and dips on your EKG to check the electrical activity in different parts of your heart. The spikes and dips are grouped into different sections that show how your heart is working
At the latter end of the p-q interval, atrial contraction occurs forcing additional blood into the ventricles. At the beginning of the QRS interval on an ECG reading, the mitral valve closes and the ventricles are at EDV (135ml). During the QRS interval, ventricular contraction occurs increasing the pressure in the ventricle and the aorta. When the pressure continues in the ventricle exceeds the pressure in the arteries, the aortic valve opens and blood is ejected. The increased pressure continues through the t peak. The ventricles are now in ESV (65ml) and the aortic valve is closed. Now the ventricles are relaxed causing pressure to fall and the cardiac cycle starts over again. This ECG reading was from a normal tracing. Keep in mind that an ECV is easy to obtain, but there are some subtleties that are very complex.
7.ECG: To see the evidence of ischemic changes, cardiomegaly suggestive of heart failure or evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy.
The heart rate is measured with an electrocardiogram, or ECG. This is a machine that measures the electrical impulses from the patient's heart. This is displayed on a monitor or ECG graph paper. The boxes on the graph paper measure time. Five small boxes are equal to one large box. The large box represents two-tenths of a second.
A number of tests would be performed to analyze the extent of damage of the heart. An electrocardiogram would be one of the first tests performed to check the electrical
Cardiac dysrhythmias come in different degrees of severity. There are heart conditions that you are able to live with and manage on a daily basis and those that require immediate attention. Atrial Fibrillation is one of the more frequently seen types of dysrhythmias (NIH, 2011). The best way to diagnosis a heart condition is by reading a cardiac strip (Ignatavicius &Workman, 2013). Cardiac strips play an chief part in the nursing world allowing the nurse and other trained medical professionals to interpret what the heart is doing. In a normal strip, one can clearly identify a P wave before every QRS complex, which is then followed by a T wave; in Atrial Fibrillation, the Sinoatrial node fires irregularly causing there to be no clear P
The heart is one of the most important organs in an organism’s body, no matter if they are aquatic, amphibian, or a mammal. This super organ works automatically, able to pump massive amounts of oxygen rich blood through the body by means of electrical impulses and the opening and closing of valves within its many layers. It is what keeps us and every other creature on this earth alive; so it is only natural for one to fear when there might be a problem with one’s heart. A cardiac arrhythmia can happen to anyone, no matter the age, race, or gender, and as such, doctors and scientist have spent years trying to better understand the heart and the way it functions so that they can try to prevent these problems and save millions of lives.
In the chart above it has five rows each row concerning different test. The first row talks about Beats per minute; in that row it ask what my beats per minute was, gives if it is over a hundred then its Tachycardia and if it is below sixty it is bradycardia and then ask if it was normal or not. My beats per minute were a hundred and fifty so it is considered Tachycardia.
Regular electrical impulses are sent within the conduction system of the heart prompting contraction (Marieb, 2015). These electrical signals can be identified and documented by the use of an electrocardiography (ECG) machine. In a familiar ECG recording, three waves will occur; The P wave, QRS complex and
The electrocardiogram (EKG) is a simple test that measures the heart's electrical activity (Donahue p. 35). The most widely used screening test is the exercise EKG, or stress test.
Recording an electrocardiogram or ECG, is a procedure which is performed daily all over the United Kingdom by thousands of healthcare workers and in particular nurses (Jacobson, 2000). The way in which this procedure is performed varies from geographical location to location and occasionally even more so, between staff on the same ward (Amos, 2000). This reason stated by Amos (2000), formed the basis of my decision to choose this topic.