ECG or EKG

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 ECG or EKG

ECG or EKG

Bottom line is what do we exactly want to know from EKG or what is the most important things we want to know from EKG?

Same thing, what do we want to know from echocardiogram or ultrasound of the heart?
What is the most important thing we want to know from echocardiogram?
What is the most important thing we want to know from CT angiogram?

The most important fact about EKG that we will not realize is that, it is like a finger print. It remains same every month. We do it every six months, we do it every year whenever we do it, it will look exactly the same. So, any change from the baseline, so called ‘baseline’ will immediately make us doctors jump up that why it has changed! Second thing, EKG immediately can tell us the rate and rhythm. Rate is usually 72 beats per
minute and rhythm is very, very regular. If you look at the two tallest ______ and take a scale, you will see the distance between is always very equal.
The master electrical switch which is SA node in the heart, when it beats or when it depolarizes or when it sends out electrical signals, it sends out electrical signal very rhythmically and you have to understand for a heart to pump to function, it has to contract and relax in a very
coordinated manner, very rhythmically.
Believe it or not, EKG can also tell us if we had a heart attack in the past. It definitely tells us if we are actively having a heart attack, but we are not talking about EKG during the chest pain or so-called ‘heart attack’.

You may not focus on this, we get our EKG and forget about it. We cannot even find it the one we had two years ago or five years ago. But, you have to understand comparison between different EKG or the past EKG. It is the single most important medical factor that helps us to focus on any early changes.
The changes may be there, but they may be very early changes and they may still fall within the normal change from the normal baseline. But then, if your EKG is same every year and now if there are some changes, then we need to figure out why this has happened!

Suppose, you have a high blood pressure for 20 years, you do not know about it as you do not have any symptoms (which is true is case of high blood pressure that it increases so slowly, we do not have any symptoms for years. I have known people with high blood pressure for 20 years
and feeling absolutely very healthy. But it does not matter, it does not mean that body is not responding to the high blood pressure. It does!  

EKG is one way we can find out whether high blood pressure is happening in a year or two or has been there for 15 to 20 years. EKG will clearly show this. There are definite changes in the EKG which shows that high blood pressure has been there for long time. Again, for such changes to happen, most important reason is high blood pressure. You have to have high blood pressure for a long time i.e. for 10 to 15 years before such changes happen. They happen very gradually, very slowly. While you do not have to understand but as years of high blood pressure progresses without taking any medication, R wave in the EKG becoming taller and S wave in the EKG becoming deeper, there is what we call electrical axis of the heart which we can calculate from the EKG and it also starts changing.

EKG can tell us tons of things, but these are the most important things we want to know. Once again, the most important thing we want to
know is any change from our normal year-to-year EKG.

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