ECG is usually the first step in checking, screening and diagnosing many cardiovascular conditions, such as electrical and mechanical diseases. It is used vastly because of many advantages like: easily operating, being handy and quick as well as being safe and affordable unlike most of other medical interventions which are generally used by clinicians. It is also well known among general population. Furthermore, there is no age limits for ECG and it can be done in almost all ages, if required. Despite the fact of its wide use, it is a good idea that every ECG should be interpreted by a cardiologist.
What is the process? Easy!
For an ECG, nine leads are attached to the patient’s chest and limbs. Together, they analyze the heart from nine different angles. Concurrently, the machine itself calculates three more angles and eventually prints a twelve-lead ECG of the patient. It takes less than 30 seconds which is so cool!
These twelve leads are like twelve cameras which record movies from twelve different angles, so that the doctor can gain valuable information by interpreting it, which includes information such as rate and rhythm disorders of heart, cardiovascular disorders (heart attack), probable structural disorders, etc.
As it was mentioned earlier, ECG is usually the first step in checking the cardiovascular system. In patients with rate and rhythm disorders, ECG is the most crucial device for diagnosing. In patients with vascular diseases with high susceptibility of heart attack, ECG plays a very important role, because it is handy and quick and of course accurate to help the health care professional to make a correct diagnosis. This can help and has been helping clinicians to treat the underlying condition accordingly. Most of the times appropriate and on-time ECG interpretations survives many patients lives.
ECG is also very effective and helpful in following up patients with known heart diseases. It is highly recommended that in case you are suffering from any heart diseases, ECG must be done and documented in the patient’s profile annually, at least!
As it was discussed earlier, ECG as a first step modality is helpful to get an idea from different possible conditions of heart; here are some examples: Structural heart diseases like atrial or ventricular dilatation, heart muscle hypertrophy (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), heart inflammation or infection (carditis, pericarditis, cardiac myositis), fluid accumulation around heart for any reason (cardiac tamponade), valvular diseases of heart, congenital heart diseases, drug side effects on heart function, etc.
It worth mentioning that ECG can be normal in patients with symptoms of heart disease. On the other hand, it can show some findings in asymptomatic patients. That is why interpretation of ECG is very important and it should be done by an expert health care professional. In short, neither normal ECG disqualifies the patient with heart disease, nor abnormal ECG confirms the heart disease. Therefore, ECG alone is not enough to check someone’s heart condition and is considered as first step in all patients.
